-J  ■ 

THE     BAILWAY. 

• 

REMARKS 

:*■'. 

AT 

BELFAST,    MAINE, 

* 

' 

1*  ■  - 

July  4,  1867. 

BY 

JOHN    A.    POOR. 

''"              *      '          * 

\ 

J. 

BOSTON:                                ^ 

LITTLE,    BROWN,   AND    COMPANY,        "                          | 

110   Washington    Street. 

18G7. 

385.1  \ 


0 


*» 


© 


THE     E  A  I  LWAY. 


P    7f/.^ 


REMARKS 


AT    BELFAST,    MAINE, 


July  4,  1867. 


BY 


JOHN    A.    POOR, 


•  -•    •     •• 


.  •     -  •  •    ,  •. 

1 1     *     •  • 


•  7   •    ♦ 


BOSTON: 
LITTLE,    BROWN,   AND    COMPANY, 

110   Washington    Street. 
1867. 


o 


EnUTed  acconliiiR  to  Act  of  Confjrcss,  iu  tlie  year  1867,  by 

Lnri.K,  lutow.v,  and  company, 
in  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  for  tUe  District  of  Massachusetts. 


O 


•  .    .  •   ' 

'  •  .  •   . 

* 


u  -  •  -.    « 


University  Press  :  Welch,  Bigelow,  &  Co., 
Cambridge. 


THE    RAILWAY. 


Mr.  President,  Ladies,  and  Gentlemen  :  — 

I  AM  liajipy  to  be  here  to-diiy.  I  am  glad  to 
participate  in  the  interesting  services  of  this  day's 
celebration.  1  rejoice  in  the  opportunity  of  revis- 
iting this  city  under  such  flattering  auspices,  whose 
beauty  of  situation  was  indelibly  impressed  upon 
my  mind  in  early  life,  and  where  for  the  first  time 
my  eyes  beheld  the  sea. 

Reared  among  the  hills  of  Oxford,  where  the  hoary 
summits  of  White-Cap  and  Bald-Pate  rear  their  lofty 
Q  heads  high  above  the  surrounding  mountains,  my 
imagination  was  stimulated  by  familiarity  with  the 
most  beautiful  valleys  and  the  grandest  mountain 
scenery  of  New  England  ;  but  my  heart  panted  for 
a  sight  of  the  ocean,  whose  sublimer  aspects  and 
mysterious  revels  had  been  pictured  to  my  youth- 
ful mind  by  stories  of  travellers  and  descriptions 
in  the  impassioned  language  of  poetry ;  and  when, 
a  boy  of  twelve,  I  first  beheld  in  the  clear  sun- 
lio-ht  of  a  winter's  morning  the  outstretching  wa- 
ters  of  Belfast  Bay,  —  embosomed  by  its  surround- 
ing hills  and  distant  islands, —  I  experienced  all 
those  sublime  emotions  of  delight  that  Wordsworth 


4  THE   RAILWAY. 

hns  recorded  in  the  finest  of  all  liis  poems,  ''  The 
Wanderer,"  as  enjoyed  by  the  young  Herdsman, 
when  on  the  top  of  the  high  mountain 

"  lit'  beheld  tlie  sun 
Rise  up,  ami  batlio  the  world  in  li-,dit !     He  looked, — 
Oeeiin  and  earth,  the  solid  frame  of  earth 
And  oeean's  li(|iii(l  mass,  beneath  him  lay 
In  j^lailiiess  and  deeji  joy.     The  elouds  were  touched, 
And  iu  tiii'ir  silent  fiiees  did  he  read 
Unutterable  love.     Sound  needed  none, 
Kor  any  voice  of  joy  ;  his  spirit  drank 
The  s|>ectiicle;  sensation,  sold,  and  form 
All  melted  into  him;  they- swallowed  up 
His  animal  bein^  ;  in  tliem  did  he  live, 
And  by  them  did  he  live  ;  they  were  his  life. 
In  such  access  of  mind,  in  such  hi^li  hour 
Of  visitation  from  the  livinjf  (lod, 
Thoujiht  was  not ;  in  enjoyment  it  expired." 

The  memories  of  more  than  forty  busy  years 
crowd  in  upon  my  thoughts  to-day.  My  desires 
were  then  as  wild  and  fathomless  as  the  great  deep, 
and  the  recollections  of  a  not  inactive  life  have  al- 
ready taught  the  lesson,  that  experience  alone  can 
teach,  that  the  achievements  of  a  man's  life  are  of 
trifling  account  as  compared  with  the  boundlessness 
of  youthful  hope  and  aspiration. 

This  first  visit  to  the  seaside  influenced  no  doubt 
my  whole  life, — made  me  fond  of  adventure  on  the 
ocean,  eager  for  geographical  knowledge,  and  studi- 
ous of  those  agencies  that  stimulate  commercial 
progress.  I  love  the  ocean  with  almost  fdial  devo- 
tion, and  without  a  daily  sight  of  it  I  am  never 
fully  satisfied  and  contented.  Mrs.  Hemans  has 
beautifully  expressed  this  sentiment  in  her  charm- 


THE   RAILWAY.  5 

ino;  son sr,  " Whore  is  tlie  Sea?"  —  tlic  Greek  Island- 
er's  lament  on  Ix'ing  taken  to  the  Vale  of  Teni[)e, 
the  most  heautll'iil  of  all  the  valleys  of  that  classic 
land.     He  exclaimed, — 

"  WInTO  is  till'  sea  ?     I  lanf^uisli  hero,  — 
Wln'iT  is  my  own  hliii;  sea  ? 
With  all  its  barks  in  tli'i't  cart'or, 
And  Hags  and  brcuzt's  free  ? 

"  O,  rich  your  myrtle's  breath  may  rise, 
Soft,  soft  your  winds  may  be  ; 
Yet  my  siek  heart  within  nie  dies  — 
Wiie'"C  is  my  own  blue  sea  V  " 

A  sentiment  like  this  animates  thousands  of  youth- 
ful minds,  —  sons  of  Maine  in  other  lands  to-day  ; 
for  we  have  m  Maine  valleys  as  sweet  as  those 
which  inspired  the  mind  of  the  poetic  Greek,  or 
m  later  times  the  more  voluptuous  taste  of  Moore, 
and  we  have  the  sparkling  waves  of  the  ocean, 
sea-views  and  island  retreats,  more  beautiful  than 
any  on  which  the  eye  of  the  Greek  mariner  ever 
rested,  —  made  more  impressive  still  by  the  swelling 
and  receding  tides,  whose  ebb  and  ilow  was  unknown 
to  the  waters  of  the  Greek  Archipelago  ;  and  the 
beautiful  forms  which,  in  Grecian  mythology,  came 
forth  from  the  flashing  foam  of  the  ^Egean  Sea,  are 
rivalled  and  surpassed  by  these  forms  of  beauty,  — 
shaped,  and  moulded,  and  heightened  into  more  per- 
fect grace  by  the  healthful  climate  and  charming 
scenery  of  Maine,  —  whose  presence  and  whose 
smiles  greet  and  encourage  us  to-day. 

But  this  is  no  time  for  poetic  fancies.     The  prac- 


6  THE   RAILWAY. 

tical  iliitios  of  the  hour  are  upon  us,  and  responsibili- 
ties greater  than  those  resting  upon  any  other  people 
are  devolved  upon  the  sons  and  daughters  of  the 
Great  Ameriean  Republie,  —  of  which  Maine  is  no 
unimportant  ]iart. 

We  eelehrate  to-day  the  ninety-Hrst  anniversary 
of  American  Independence.  It  is  our  duty  to  cele- 
brate it  to-diiv  as  never  before  ;  for  it  is  the  hrst 
Fourth  of  July  that  has  witnessed  the  practical 
working  out  of  the  grea*".  problem  in  government 
which  the  Declaration  of  Independence  proclaimed 
and  foreshadowed,  —  "Etj^udVdij  of  man  before  the 
lawr 

Since  the  Fourth  of  July,  1770,  political  writers 
and  orators  have  inculcated  the  principles  which  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  embodied  ;  but  until 
the  present  year  these  principles  have  failed  of  com- 
plete application   in  piactice. 

One  month  ago  this  day,  on  the  fourth  of  June, 
1807,  was  witnessed  the  first  practical  application 
and  adoption  at  the  National  Ca})ital  of  tbe  princi- 
ples proclaimed  ])y  the  Declaration  of  Independence, 
that  "  all  men  are  created  equal." 

This  great  ])rinciple  being  now  established,  it  may 
be  proper  that  the  National  Holiday  be,  in  part,  given 
up  to  the  discussion  of  other  than  political  (|ues- 
tions,  —  tiiose  of  great  conuncrcial  and  social  value, 
like  the  railway  and  works  of  public  improvement. 
Next  to  the  enjoyment  of  life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit 
of  happiness,  no  question  so  directly-  concerns  every 
man,  woman,  and  child  of  the  community,  as  that  of 
cheap  locomotion. 


THE   RAILWAY.  7 

Travel  Is  the  great  educator  of  man.  Men  are  in- 
telligent in  proportion  to  the  nimiber  of  objects  and 
facts  they  have  studied  or  observed. 

Of  all  agencies  known  to  civilized  man,  the  railway 
is  now  universally  admitted  to  be  the  greatest.  The 
war  which  has  just  closed  has  demonstrated  the  value 
of  the  railway  for  purposes  of  war  as  well  as  peace ; 
for  without  the  use  of  the  locomotive  railwav,  the 
slaveholders'  rebellion  would  not  at  this  day  have 
been  crushed. 

But  before  speaking  of  the  railway,  it  is  our  duty 
to  2:)ay  a  passing  tribute  to  those  who  have  achieved 
success  in  our  great  struggle,  and  in  whom  has  been 
developed  the  loftiest  sentiments  of  nationality,  which 
throw  into  shade  the  boasted  loyalty  of  other  lands 
and  other  times.  Men  worship  an  idea.  Respect  for 
Roman  law-  and  the  Roman  senate  enal)led  that  body 
to  conquer  the  world.  The  brilliant  achievements 
of  Napoleon  the  Great  raised  him  in  the  estimation 
of  the  French  people  almost  to  an  object  of  idolatry, 
and  this  sentiment  is  the  chief,  if  not  the  only  sup- 
port of  the  throne  of  his  nephew,  the  ill-fated  despot 
of  France. 

But  no  such  devotion  to  an  idea  as  that  which 
characterized  the  young  men  of  the  original  Free 
States  in  the  recent  war  has  ever  before  been  exhib- 
ited in  the  annals  of  recorded  history.  The  Spartans 
who  fell  at  Thermopylte,  and  the  La  Yendeans  who 
gidlantly  gave  up  their  lives  in  defence  of  an  idea  in 
the  tune  of  the  French  Revolution,  never  exhibited 


8  THE   RAILWAY. 

greater  devotion  than  the  pons  of  Maine  exhibited  on 
numerous  battle-fieklH  of  the  war,  —  saving  the  re- 
treat of  McClellan  on  the  Peninsula,  holding  Ceme- 
tery Hill  at  Gettysburg,  and  by  the  immortal  achieve- 
ments of  our  Eighteenth  Maine  Heavy  Artillery  at 
Spottsylvania.  These  young  men  gave  up  their  lives 
in  the  first  shock  of  their  first  battle,  and  preserved 
from  serious  disaster,  if  not  from  defeat,  the  great 
army  of  Grant  beyond  the  Rapidan,  by  holding  the 
Rebel  army  at  bay  and  checking  a  daring  flank  move- 
ment of  the  enemy. 

I  saw  this  gallnnt  regiment,  1,800  strong,  march 
through  Washington,  in  gay  trappings  to  the  sound 
of  stirring  music,  and  embark  upon  the  Potomac  for 
the  front,  on  a  beautiful  Sunday  morning  in  May, 
1864.  They  were  full  of  courage  and  gallant  bearing 
as  I  passed  through  the  ranks  and  shook  the  hand  of 
many  a  son  of  an  old  acquaintance  and  friend.  The 
next  Sunday  after  I  met  the  steamer  on  which  476 
of  these  gallant  young  men  were  borne  back  to 
Washington,  wounded  or  as  corpses. 

There  is  something  curious  in  the  feelings  of  men 
which  leads  them  to  regard  the  body  of  a  dead  sol- 
dier who  has  fallen  in  battle  with  diflbrent  emotions 
from  those  felt  towards  the  ordinary  dead.  Men 
shrink  instinctively  from  the  touch  of  the  corpse  of  a 
drowned  mon,  or  of  one  who  has  died  of  disease;  but 
the  body  of  a  soldier,  who  in  health  and  strength  and 
beauty's  pride  has  gone  to  his  final  account  from  the 
field  of  his  fame,  is  as  beautiful  in  death  as  life,  and 


THE   RAILWAY.  U 

we  pass  among  tlie  coffins  to  read  the  names  of  their 
occupants  as  carelessly,  if  not  as  cheerfully,  as  we  pass 
among  the  ranks  of  the  living. 

This  regiment  lost  1,173  men,  from  May,  1864,  to 
Janr.ary,  1865,  of  whom  1,012  fell  in  battle  or  died 
from  their  wounds,  —  a  slaughter  unparalleled  in  the 
history  of  modern  warfore. 

Many  tales  of  the  heroism  of  this  regiment  are  re- 
lated, one  of  which  I  venture  to  recall  to  memory. 
Two  brothers  were  marching  side  by  side  ;  one  re- 
ceived a  mortal  wound  in  front,  and  fell.  The  out- 
stretched arms  of  his  brother  were  instantly  around 
him.  "  It  is  all  over  with  me,"  said  the  dying  soldier ; 
"  lay  me  down  and  go  back  to  the  ranks,  where  you 
are  wanted ;  it  is  no  use  to  waste  a  moment's  tune  on. 
me  "  :  and  so  he  died. 

"  Between  the  men  who  noble  deeds  have  done 
And  every  poet,  to  the  end  of  time, 
There  is  a  brotherly  communion  : 

One  Father-God  has  made  them  both  sublime." 

What  was  the  sentiment  that  animated  this  youth- 
ful hero  ?  It  was  love  of  our  nationality,  pride  in  our 
national  union ;  it  was  devotion  to  the  cause  of  na- 
tional unity  and  freedom. 

No  sentiment  stronger  than  this  has  ever  animated 
a  people  in  war,  no  loyalty  to  a  reigning  house,  no 
devotion  to  a  great  military  leader,  has  ever  exhibit- 
ed such  strength  of  attachment  and  such  determined 
valor  as  that  which  animated  our  young  men,  who 
went  forth  to  battle  for  the  principles  of  our  govern- 
ment, symbolized  and  enshrined  in  the  star-spangled. 
banner  of  the  Republic. 


10  THE   RAILWAY. 

"  Long  aliall  it  wave 
O'er  the  land  of  the  free,  and  the  home  of  the  brave ." 

The  history  of  the  war  is  yet  to  be  written.  This 
is  not  the  time  to  call  the  roll  of  its  heroes.  The 
West  proudly  boasts  its  mighty  names,  and  Ohio 
points  with  pride  to  those  of  her  three  sons,  —  Grant, 
Sherman,  and  Sheridan. 

NewEnn-land  has  her  o:reat  names  also;  and  Maine 
with  equal  exultation  presents  the  names  of  three  of 
her  sons  as  renowned  in  the  annals  of  war,  —  one, 
alas !  already  summoned  from  the  field  of  his  fame  to 
his  final  account,  who  for  tried  valor,  coolness  in  dan- 
ger, and  brilliant  achievements  on  the  field  of  battle, 
had  no  superiors,  —  Berry,  Howard,  and  Chamberlain. 

If  some  should  object  that  this  day's  work  breaks 
in  upon  our  New  P]ngland  custom  of  devoting  the  day 
to  political  subjects,  we  may  point  to  distinguished 
examples  for  our  justification. 

Fifty  years  ago  this  day,  on  the  Fourth  of  July, 
1817,  De  Witt  Clinton,  —  a  name  ever  honored  in 
our  annals  as  the  great  leader  of  public  improve- 
ments in  the  Empire  State,  —  with  public  ceremonies 
commenced  the  work  of  constructing  the  Erie  Canal, 
which  connects  Lake  Erie  at  Bufliilo  with  the  Hudson 
River  at  Albany,  a  distance  of  364  miles,  —  the  first 
great  step  in  making  New  York  City  the  commercial 
emporium  of  the  New  World. 

Twenty-one  years  ago  to-day  ground  was  broken 
at  Portland,  July  4th,  1846,  in  the  connnencement 
of  the  Atlantic  and  St.  Lawrence  Railroad ;  and  the 


THE   RAILWAY.  11 

honored  Chief  Magistrate  of  Maine,  then  as  now  a 
citizen  of  Belfast,  signaUzed  the  event  by  striking  the 
first  blow  in  a  work  that  connects  the  open  sea  at 
Portland  with  the  St.  Lawi'once  at  Montreal,  a  distance 
of  292  miles,  which  line  has  since  been  absorbed  into 
the  Grand  Trunk  Railway  of  Canada,  with  an  un- 
broken line  of  iron  from  the  waters  of  Casco  Bay  to 
the  distant  shores  of  Lake  Huron, — forming,  in  all  its 
connections  and  extensions,  a  railroad  of  1,377  miles, 
under  one  management,  —  the  greatest  number  of 
miles  of  any  railway  company  in  the  world, 

I  shall  never  forget  that  occasion,  for  it  was  with 
fear  and  trembling  that  the  heretofore  deserted  mlUuje 
of  Portland,  w^ith  a  population  of  15,000,  and  a  valu- 
ation of  less  than  %  5,000,000,  pledged  everything  to 
the  construction  of  a  railway  to  the  border,  to  connect 
there  with  a  line  to  be  constructed  from  Montreal  to 
the  same  point,  forming  in  connection  the  Portland 
and  Montreal  Railway  ;  the  completion  of  which  line 
from  Portland  harbor  to  the  boundary  cost  a  greater 
sum  than  the  aggregate  of  all  the  estates,  real  and 
personal,  in  the  city  of  Portland  at  that  day. 

Governor  Anderson  I  recollect  as  a  merchant  of 
Belfast  when  I  first  visited  it,  and  mv  heart  went  out 
toward  him  when  I  saw  him,  as  Governor  of  Maine, 
inaugm'ate  the  commencement  of  a  work  to  which 
my  thoughts  and  labors  had  been  directed.  I  should 
be  glad  to  meet  him  here  to-day,  to  tender  him  hearty 
thanks  for  the  great  service  he  performed  for  the 
State,  by  giving  to  that  work  the  sanction  of  his  name 
and  the  hifluence  of  his  position  as  Governor. 


12  THE   RAILWAY. 

In  tlio  presence  of  the  assembled  Senators  and  Rep- 
resentatives of  Maine,  surrounded  hy  a  vast  concourse 
of  citizens  and  strangers,  that  great  work  was  entered 
upon,  and  has  gone  forward  to  successful  completion  ; 
and  "  the  small  fishing-town "  of  Portland,  as  it  was 
derisively  called  by  our  jealous  neighbors  of  the  Bay 
State,  has  become  a  metropolitan  city,  w^itli  a  valua- 
tion six  times  greater  than  it  then  had,  and  improved 
in  still  greater  ratio  in  all  the  elements  of  prosperity 
and  success. 

And  here  again  allow  me  to  acknowledge  a  later 
debt.  When  the  city  of  Portland  was  laid  in  ashes  by 
the  great  fire  of  July  4th,  18G6,  Governor  Anderson 
was  in  Washington ;  and  when  some  public  men  of 
Maine  held  })ack,  from  a  sentiment  of  false  delicacy, 
he  was  prominent  and  efficient  among  those  who 
moved  in  the  matter  of  taking  up  subscriptions  in 
Washington,  extending  not  only  a  proper  feeling,  but 
influencing  by  this  feeling  the  action  of  Congress  in 
favor  of  aid.  It  seems  proper  that  Portland  should 
acknowledge  this  debt,  though  I  hope  she  will  not  be 
called  on  to  return  in  kind.  One  of  iier  most  public- 
spirited  merchants,*  who  favored  your  enterprise  as 
the  Chairman  of  the  Railroad  Committee  in  the  last 
Legislature,  I  am  glad  to  see  with  us  to-day,  in  full 
sympathy  with  your  movement  as  one  of  the  great 
enterprises  of  the  State. 

You  propose  to  commence  the  construction  of  a 
work  of  equal  importance  to  your  city  as  that  begun 

*  Hon.  George  W.  Woodman. 


THE   RAILWAY.  13 

at  Portland  twenty-one  years  ago.  Situat-id  midway 
betvveen  the  two  extremes  of  our  State,  on  its  ocean 
front  equally  distant  from  Kittery  Point  and  Quoddy 
Head,  with  a  deep  and  capacious  harbor,  open  at  all 
seasons  of  the  year,  Belfast  was  selected  by  the  chief 
of  the  United  States  Topographical  Bureau,  Colonel 
Long,  as  a  proper  terminus  of  a  proposed  railway  from 
Quebec  to  the  open  Atlantic  sea.  The  necessity  of 
^iucli  a  work  as  a  direct  communication  from  the  St. 
Lawrence  to  the  open  sea  on  tliii^  ocean  front  was 
pointed  out  to  his  government  by  the  heroic  and  sji- 
gacious  Champlain,  the  illustrious  founder  of  French 
colonization  in  America,  more  than  two  hundred  and 
thirty  years  ago,  and  the  failure  of  the  French  gov- 
ernment to  carry  out  his  plans  cost  France  the  no- 
blest empire  of  the  New  World.  By  holding  this  Atr 
Ian  tic  front,  now  known  as  the  Gulf  of  Maine,  and 
retaining  what  she  for  years  held,  the  basins  of  the 
St.  Lawrence  and  the  Mississippi,  France  would  have 
held  to-day  a  ''  dominion  "  in  America  greater  than 
that  recently  organized  on  our  northern  border,  and 
vastly  greater  than  that  now  held  by  the  United 
States. 

But  political  and  military  notions  bear  no  compari- 
son in  power  to  commercial  ideas.  It  was  the  com- 
merce of  the  Lakes  and  Upper  St.  Lawrence  that 
made  Montreal  superior  to  Quebec.  Montreal  is  at 
the  head  of  sea  navigation  in  the  summer  months, 
and  the  St.  Lawrence  canals  have  made  her  a  com- 
petitor of  New  York  in  summer  for  Western  trade. 
The  inception  of  these  works,  even  before  their  com- 


14  THE   RAILWAY. 

pletion,  demonstrated  the  necessity  of  an  outlet  by 
railway  from  Montreal  to  an  open  winter  ha!-bor. 
This  necessity  gave  us  the  line  of  railway  from  Port- 
land to  Montreal,  at  a  cost  exceeding  $12,000,000. 
This  great  line,  after  going  tlu'ough  the  discipline 
which  all  great  enterprises  must  undergo,  will  emerge 
into  complete  success,  and  become  the  greatest  car- 
rier of  freight  of  any  line  of  railway  extending  from 
the  seaboard  to  the  Upper  Lakes. 

The  inception  of  this  great  enterprise  of  a  railway 
to  Montreal  was  the  begiiniing  of  the  Maine  railway 
system.  Maine  lies  between  the  Upper  and  Lower 
Provinces  like  a  wedge.  The  people  of  Maine  ob- 
jected, in  1837,  to  the  construction  of  a  line  of  rail- 
road from  St.  Andrews  to  Quebec  across  our  State  as 
a  provincial  or  imperial  measure  ;  but  when  in  1843 
a  plan  was  proposed  in  Maine,  of  an  international  line 
of  railway  across  the  breadth  of  our  State,  connecting 
ILilifax  with  Montreal  by  the  easiest  and  most  direct 
route,  the  people  of  Eastern  Maine  were  but  too  ready 
to  agree  to  it,  though  appalled  at  the  magnitude  of 
the  suggestion.  To  construct  a  line  of  railroad  for  a 
distance  of  835  miles,  portions  through  an  unbroken 
wilderness,  seemed  to  them  beyond  the  power  of  the 
men  of  this  generation.  Hence,  instetid  of  being 
undertaken  as  a  whole,  it  was  to  be  taken  up  by 
sections. 

By  the  European  and  North  American  Railway 
and  the  Grand  Trunk  Line  the  distance  from  Halifax 
to  Montreal  is  835  miles,  as  follows  :  — 


THE   RAILWAY.  15 

International  Line. 


Halifax  to  Truro     . 

Truro  to  New  Brunswick  frontier 

Nova  Sfotia  boundary  to  Moncton  , 

Moncton  to  St.  John  . 

St.  Jolin  to  Maine  frontier 

Maine  frontier  to  Hancor    .         .    . 


o 


Bangor  to  Danville  Junction 


■» 


61  milea, 

.     73 

3G 

.     92 

88 

.  108 

110 

.  21)7 

Danville  Junction  to  Montreal  . 

Total  ...        835     " 
Of  this  835  miles,  539  are  built,  and  296  in  process  of  construction. 

With  the  iiiiiin  piir])Ose  constantly  in  view,  the  line 
to  Montreal  was  publicly  proposed  in  1844,  com- 
menced upon  July  4th,  1846,  and  completed  so  that 
cars  ran  through  from  Montreal  to  Portland,  July  18, 
1853.  The  plan  was  to  carry  a  single  line  I'rom  Port- 
land east,  by  the  way  of  Lewiston,  Gardiner,  Augusta, 
Waterville,  and  Bangor,  using  the  line  of  the  Montreal 
roiid  as  a  common  trunk  for  the  time  being  as  far  as 
Danville  Junction,  throwing  off  branch  lines  as  want- 
ed, extending  one  from  Yarmouth  or  Pownal  to  Bruns- 
wick and  Bath,  one  up  the  Kennebec  River,  and  an- 
other to  Belfast,  &c.  No  sooner  had  the  Montreal 
road  been  started  on  this  plan,  than  a  rival  line  from 
Portland  to  Brunswick  and  up  the  Kennebec  Valley 
was  set  on  foot,  forming  two  rival  lines  the  whole 
distance  from  Portland  to  AVaterville. 

This  antagonism  stimulated  the  people  on  the  two 
routes,  led  both  companies  into  hasteful  and  waste- 
ful expenditures,  —  causing  the  lines  to  cost  largely 
in  excess  of  any  need,  and  to  become  rivals  and  com- 
petitors for  business. 


16  THE    RAILWAY. 

This  has  1)ecn  a  serious  drawl  jack.  It  discouraged 
the  people  of  other  coiunninities  fioiii  embarking  in 
railway  projects,  and  has  begotten  hostility  of  gauges 
and  unfriendly  contests  in  legislation  to  this  day. 

This  state  of  things  has  created  distrust  in  railway 
securities  and  delayed  the  carrying  out  of  the  great 
p]astcrn  line  and  other  important  enterprises. 

But  the  great  enterprise  of  the  State  is  now  se- 
cured beyond  all  peradventure.  The  State  aided  the 
European  and  North  American  Railway  by  the  grant 
of  its  claims  against  the  United  States  which  accrued 
prior  to  1860,  and  of  her  interest  in  the  public  lands. 
Massachusetts  granted  her  claims  against  the  United 
States,  held  jointly  with  Maine,  to  the  same  object ; 
and  these  claims,  with  the  $500,000  already  ex- 
pended on  it,  and  the  aid  the  city  of  Bangor  has 
given,  have  been  sufficient  to  interest  capitalists  in 
the  larger  cities  of  the  country ;  and  responsible 
parties  propose  to  complete  the  links  in  the  chain 
from  Bangor  to  St.  John  city,  —  the  Province  of 
New  Brunswick  donating  $lo,500  per  mile  for  West- 
ern extension,  the  section  of  eighty-eight  miles  from 
the  boundary  to  the  city  of  St.  John.  The  balance 
of  the  money  required  beyond  the  New  Brunswick 
gift  and  the  Bangor  loan  of  $1,000,000,  to  complete 
the  line  from  Bangor  to  St.  John,  is  to  be  raised  on 
the  first  mortgage  bonds  of  each  company,  with  the 
public  hmds  of  Maine  as  an  additional  security  on 
Maine's  portion  of  the  line. 

The  valuable  aid  received  from  Massachusetts  was 
secured  mainly  through  the  services  of  three  distin- 


THE   RAILWAY.  17 

giiisliod  public  men  of  that  State,  —  one  a  native  ol 
Maine,  who,  as  Governor  of  Massachusetts  tlirough 
the  whole  period  of  the  Rebellion,  gained  a  national 
reputation  second  to  that  of  no  one  in  the  country;* 
another,  for  3ears  a  resident  of  Mcme,  returned  to 
Massachusetts  without  losing  his  love  for  our  own, 
and  who,  as  nieinl)er  of  the  Legislature  of  that  State, 
has  been  enabled  to  render  most  hnportant  services 
to  our  own.t  And  we  owe  a  debt  of  gratitude  to  the 
gentleman  who,  for  two  years  past,  has  so  ably  fdled 
the  ollice  of  Sj)eaker  of  the  House  of  Representa- 
tives of  Massachusetts.^ 

New  Brunswick,  Nova  Scotia,  and  Prince  Edward 
Island,  with  48,584  square  miles  of  territory,  con- 
tained, in  18C1,  GG3,394  inhabitants. 

Fidl  of  natural  advantages  and  resources,  from 
their  fortunate  position,  their  inicqualled  maritime 
advantages,  their  numerous  harbors  and  bays,  swarm- 
ing with  the  choicest  fish,  their  treasures  in  coal,  iron, 
sand-stones,  gypsum,  grindstones,  gold,  and  many 
other  valuable  minerals,  their  extensive  tind)er  for- 
ests and  rich  soils, — these  Provinces  only  need  access 
to  the  markets  of  the  United  States  to  become  as  rich 
and  populous  as  the  older  States  of  New  England. 

The  business  of  a  trunk  line  connecting  these  dis- 
tricts with  the  markets  of  the  United  States  must 
prove  remunerative  of  the  small  cost  of  its  construc- 
tion. 

*  Governor  John  A.  Andrew.  :j:  lion.  James  M.  Stone, 

t  lion.  George  O.  Brastow. 
2 


18  THE   RAILWAY. 

From  St.  .Tolin  to  Ilalifiix,  a  distiincc  of  202  mlloi^, 
the  line  is  built,  or  in  process  of  construction,  so  that 
Avithin  three  years  the  entire  line  across  the  l)readt  i 
of  our  State  from  Piscatacjua  at  Kittery  to  the  St. 
Croix,  a  distance  of  300  miles,  will  be  finished,  com- 
pleting the  chain  of  railway  between  Halifax  and 
New  York,  a  distance  of  940  miles,  connecting  Hali- 
fax, or  the  most  eastern  Atlantic  port,  with  Port- 
land, Montreal,  and  Chicago  at  the  North,  and  Bos- 
ton, New  York,  and  Washington  at  the  South. 

The  line  once  completed  from  Halifax  to  New 
York,  all  the  ocean  steamers  must  make  its  eastern 
terminus  a  port  of  call,  and  it  will  intercept  the  ocean 
travel  coming  from  P]urope.  The  bulk  of  the  busi- 
ness travel,  and  much  of  the  pleasure  travel  between 
Europe  and  America  will  take  this  route. 

The  terms  employed  by  a  leading  London  journal, 
speaking  of  the  Portland  convention,  may  be  appro- 
priately quoted  in  support  of  the  views  herein  ex- 
pressed :  — 

"  EuRoi'KAN  AND  NoRTH  Amkrican  Railway.  —  It  is  with 
extreme  satisfaction  we  observe,  that  at  no  distant  day  the  Atlantic 
is  to  be  bridged  over  ])y  means  of  such  an  improved  system  of 
communication,  that  the  Old  World  and  the  New  will,  by  means  of 
rail  and  steam,  be  brought  nearer  to  each  other  than  Leith  and 
London  are,  by  the  average  voyages  of  their  smacks.  From  the 
westernmost  point  of  Gulway  to  the  easternmost  point  of  North 
America  the  sea  voyage  will  be  easy  of  accomplishment  within 
five  days,  and  silready  the  plans  of  the  railroads  from  these  points 
to  the  interior  of  both  countries  have  been  fully  matured,  and  the 
undertakings  to  a  great  extent  subscribed  for. 

"  North  America  will  then  be  to  Enjjland  what  Scotland  now  is. 
The  inhabitants  of  each  country  will  reside  almost  indifferently  in 


THE  RAILWAY.  '  19 

citlior.  Our  Senators,  in  place  of  Imsteriing  at  the  close  of  the  ses- 
sion to  get  oH'  to  grouse  and  the  moors,  will  bolt  from  St.  Stephens 
to  the  prairies  and  buflfalo-huntinfr.  Our  fashionable  onun/t's  will 
winter  at  Now  ( )rleans  or  St.  Louis,  in  place  of  Home  and  Nai)le9, 
and  our  nobility  and  gentry  will  have  their  demesnes  and  mansions 
in  the  Western  or  Middle  States,  as  well  aa  in  the  mother  country. 
The  intercourse  will  be  so  intimate  and  universal  as  to  materially 
modify  the  iiabits  of  lil'o  and  thought  in  both  hemispheres.  Kng- 
land  will  become  more  republican  and  America  less  democratic. 
The  distinctions  and  jealousies  of  the  two  States  will  become  ob- 
literated by  becoming  ridiculous  ;  because  people  of  the  same  ori- 
gin, blood,  language,  history,  literature,  and  traditions,  in  daily  and 
hourly  communion  with  each  otlier,  —  those  having  the  strongest 
social  and  moral  atfinities  being  the  most  like  to  find  each  other 
out. 

"  Let  this  tide  of  intercourse  once  fairly  set  in,  —  let  the  United 
States  become  the  fashionable,  and  the  easy  retrenching  and  retir- 
ing resort  of  our  uobility,  gentry,  farmers  perhaps,  and  superanuat- 
ed  merchants,  and  the  tide  will  flow  on  like  the  Propoutic,  '  which 
knows  no  retiring  ebb.'  " 

When  the  charter  of  the  European  and  North  Ameri- 
can Railway  Company  was  granted  in  1850,  only  two 
ocean  steamers  crossed  the  Atlantic  per  week  ;  now 
they  are  increased  to  seventeen  per  week  or  more, 
without  counting  the  Great  Eastern.  In  a  lew  years 
there  will  be  a  steamer  departing  dally  from  each 
side. 

Had  there  been  an  union  of  effort  and  of  interest, 
in  room  of  rivalry  and  competition,  the  line  from 
Portland  to  Bangor  would  have  been  as  profitable  as 
that  between  Portsmouth  and  Portland,  —  a  jjaying 
line  from  the  start,  —  and  secured  long  before  this 


20  THE   RMLWAY. 

the  lino  to  St.  John  and  Halifax,  with  as  many 
branch  lines  on  either  side  as  the  mterest  of  business 
woidd  have  required. 

A  paying  line  from  Portland  east  would  have  at- 
tracted capital  from  the  large  markets  at  moderate 
rates  of  interest,  and  not  drawn  heavily  upon  the  re- 
sources of  the  people,  as  did  the  building  of  these 
two  lines  upon  the  people  on  both  routes  in  Maine. 

These  unfortunate  rivalries  exhausted  the  means 
of  both  companies,  and  put  Maine  back  ten  years 
at  least  in  the  race  of  public  improvements.  It  dis- 
couraged mdustry  at  home,  and  led  our  people  to 
emigrate  to  other  lands,  so  tliat  this  State  made  but 
moderate  progress  for  the  ten  years  between  1854 
and  18G4. 

But  happily  the  tide  has  turned.  In  1864  Maine 
changed  her  policy,  aided  the  railway  east  as  above 
stated,  and  has  since  exhibited  a  becoming  State 
pride  by  holding  out  inducements  for  the  invest- 
ment of  capital  within  the  State,  and  adopted  meas- 
ures to  make  known  our  vast  undeveloped  resour- 
ces. The  Ilydrographic  Survey  now  in  progress, 
when  its  results  shall  have  been  made  known,  will 
raise  our  State,  not  only  in  the  estimation  of  its  own 
people,  but  of  those  in  other  lands. 

No  clearer  evidence  of  progress  of  ideas  in  Maine 
has  been  shown  than  in  the  legislation  at  the  last 
session  in  flivor  of  your  own  enterprise,  the  railroad 
from  Belfost  to  Moosehead  Lake,  —  a  work  that  shall 
connect  the   waters   of  this   beautifid   Belfast  Bay, 


THE   RAILWAY.  21 

in  the  most  direct  line  with  the  largest  and  most 
beautiful  of  all  the  lakes  of  New  England.  Event- 
ually this  line  will  stretch  itself  farther  northward 
till  it  crosses  the  dividing  ridge  that  separates  Maine 
from  Canada,  and  descends  by  easy  gradients  to  the 
St.  Lawrence,  opposite  the  ancient  citadel  of  Quebec. 

This  railroad,  reaching  from  the  seaboard  to  the 
interior,  will  impart  new  value  to  every  farm  and 
to  every  farm  product  within  striking  distance  of 
its  line.  It  will  lift  the  mortgage  by  enhancing 
the  value  of  every  acre  of  land,  of  every  bushel 
of  potatoes,  every  ton  of  hay,  and  of  every  tree  of 
the  forest  on  its  way.  It  will  stimulate  production 
by  enlarging  the  market  of  the  farmer,  clear  the 
lands  of  its  forests,  which,  instead  of  being  burnt 
on  the  ground  and  wasted,  will  be  brought  to  mar- 
ket and  turned  into  gold,  while  the  waterfldls  run- 
ning to  waste  on  the  route  will  be  made  great 
labor-doing  machines,  producing  articles  of  value  in 
various  forms  of  manufacture  and  in  numerous  forms 
of  industry. 

As  the  railway  advances  farther  and  farther  into 
the  interior,  its  influence  will  widen  like  a  fan  or 
the  spreading  branches  of  a  great  tree,  attracting 
the  traffic  and  the  travel  of  a  wider  and  wider  belt 
of  country  as  it  marches  inland,  each  branch  of  this 
ever-expanding  tree  attracting  more  and  more  of 
the  business  of  the  surrounding  country;  while  a 
development  of  business  is  going  forward  on  the 
line  almost  in  geometric  progression,  by  the  com- 
bined influence  of  increased   capital  and  quickened 


22  TIIE   RAILWAY. 

circulation,   extending   over   the   whole   breadth   of 
country  brought  within  the  reach  of  its  influence. 

As  your  railway  reaches  the  line  of  the  Great 
Eastern  trunk  line  at  Newport,  now  the  Maine 
Central  Railroad,  whose  President  I  see  with  us  to- 
day, it  will  draw  to  the  open  waters  of  your  har- 
bor whatever  seeks  the  cheaper  conveyance  of 
water;  for  of  all  methods  of  transportation,  none  is 
60  cheap  as  that  upon  navigable  rivers  or  the 
open  sea. 

It  used  in  olden  times  to  cost  a  dollar  to  carry 
a  hundred  pounds  100  miles  by  wagon  transporta- 
tion. The  railway  will  carry  the  same  load  at  a 
■profit  the  same  distance  for  one  tenth  of  that  price, 
or  for  $2  per  ton,  while  by  water  conveyance,  in 
ordinary  times,  the  same  load  will  be  carried  for  a 
one  tenth  of  the  cost  of  railway  transit,  or  at  the 
rate  of  twenty  cents  per  ton  for  100  miles,  for 
goods  that  do  not  require  despatch,  like  bricks,  lum- 
ber, granite  foundation,  slate,  iron,  and  other  like 
commodities.  Hence  all  merchandise  and  the  pro- 
duce of  the  interior  seek  the  nearest  route  to  the 
open  sea.  Trade  concentrates  and  capital  is  planted 
at  those  points  where  the  transfer  is  made  from  land 
'carriage  to  the  sea-going  craft. 

This  is  what  has  built  up  commercial  towns  in 
this  and  other  countries.  It  is  this  that  has  built 
up  New  York,  New  Orleans,  and  of  late  given 
Buch  an  impulse  to  the  business  and  trade  of  Poit- 
hind. 


THE   RAILWAY.  23 

For  twenty-four  weeks  of  the  year  steamers  loud 
at  Portland  for  Europe  with  Western  produce 
brought  by  the  Grand  Trunk  Railway.  The  same 
steamers  land  at  Portland  merchandise  Ijrought  from 
Europe,  destined  for  Montreal  and  the  West.  This 
business  is  capable  of  indefinite  expansion,  and  will 
be  carried  on  throughout  the  year,  as  soon  as  the 
working  power  of  the  Grand  Trunk  Railway,  and 
other  new  lines  proposed,  shall  be  equal  to  the  de- 
mands of  trade.  So  with  the  lousiness  of  your  har- 
bor; you  are  the  natural  market-place  already  for 
a  lurge  section  of  the  State.  As  you  reach  the  lake 
you  will  connect  with  thirty-six  miles  of  the  finest 
inland  navigation  in  summer,  and  tlie  luitouched 
forests  around  Moosehead  Liike  will  come  to  mar- 
ket. Cultivated  fields  and  farms  will  take  the  place 
of  the  primeval  woodlands.  The  waters  of  this 
lake  will  be  vexed  with  steamers  as  numerous  as 
those  that  now  ply  upon  the  lakes  of  Switzerland ; 
and  the  beautiful  headlands  ii  >\v  clad  in  the  garb 
of  nature,  hiding-places  of  the  moose  and  the  deer, 
will  become  classic  in  after  times,  like  the  shores  of 
Lake  Leman  and  the  Lake  of  Geneva,  the  homes 
of  scholars,  poets,  and  historians. 

There  is  more  money  value  in  the  forests  of 
Maine  than  in  the  firms  of  Maine  to-day.  As  pop- 
ulation increases  forests  disappear,  and  the  supply 
of  lumber  has  been  exhausted  to  such  a  degree 
that  building  materials  are  five  times  their  former 
price.  Wood,  which^  formerly  represented  only  the 
price   of  cutting  and  transportation,   has   advanced 


24  THE   RAILWAY. 

in  a  fourfold  degree,  and  there  is  not  a  cord  of 
wood  on  the  margin  of  Moo.sehead  Lake  that  will 
not  be  of  value,  standing  in  its  native  forests,  within 
five  years  from  the  time  the  railway  shall  reach 
the  lake.  It  used  to  cost  $10  an  acre,  when  I 
was  a  boy  in  the  country,  to  clear  wild  lands.  The 
railway  will  not  only  clear  the  lands  without  cost, 
but  will  pay  $10  per  acre  for  the  privilege  of 
clearing  it,  imparting  a  clear  value  of  $20  per 
acre  to  all  land  within  striking  distance  of  its  line, 
or  of  lake  navigation. 

Gradually  the  railway  will  penetrate  beyond  the 
lake  and  clear  the  land  to  the  very  summit  of  the 
dividing  ridge,  giving  to  every  tree  and  acre  of 
ground  a  value  hitherto  unknown,  and  a  population 
will  cluster  about  this  great  lake  of  ours,  to  which 
other  lines  of  railway  than  yours  are  proposed,  like 
that  which  is  now  concentrated  around  the  northern 
lakes  of  England  and  Scotland. 

The  necessity  of  this  line  to  the  future  prosperity 
of  your  city  impressed  itself  upon  the  minds  of  its 
leading  citizens,  and  they  went  to  the  Logislatiu'o 
and  asked  the  privilege  of  building  it ;  the  gentle- 
man who  officiates  as  President  of  this  celeljration,  as 
Mayor  of  this  city,  presented  a  plan  asking  for  the 
opportunity^  of  resorting  to  the  only  method  possible 
for  securing  it,  —  the  right  to  tax  themselves.  They 
resorted  to  a  measure  in  some  respects  novel  and 
original,  but  which  may  change  the  system  of  con- 
structing railroads  in  this  State.  Let  me  go  back  a 
few  steps  and  explain. 


THE   RAILWAY.  25 

The  Locomotive  Railway  came  upon  the  world  like 
a  miracle.  All  previous  modes  of  land  conveyance 
were  slow  and  cumbersome.  As  the  pack-horse  re- 
lieved the  solitary  foot-traveller,  so  the  common  wag- 
on, the  pleasure-carriage,  and  the  stage-coach  came 
in  its  time  to  man's  relief;  but  the  greatest  of  all  the 
means  of  transportation,  the  locomotive  engine,  pro- 
duced in  the  lifetime  of  a  single  generation  greater 
results,  affecting  man's  physical  and  social  condition, 
than  all  the  agencies  of  previous  times.  It  contrib- 
uted to  his  social  advancement,  sthuidated  consump- 
tion and  production,  increased  the  demand  for  labor, 
and  relieved  the  burdens  of  the  operative  classes  be- 
yond any  conception  of  a  previous  age,  and  by  the 
dilfusion  of  knowledge  has  increased  the  inventive 
and  productive  powers  of  the  human  race  to  an  ex- 
tent that  defies  all  powers  of  calculation  for  the 
futin^e. 

The  use  of  a  smooth  road-bed  with  a  hard  surface 
for  the  moving  of  heavy  bodies  must  be  as  ancient 
as  the  Pyramids.  The  Roman  ro.ils,  like  the  Appian 
Way  from  Rome  to  Capua,  thence  to  Brand  usium, 
built  by  Appius  Claudius,  Crassus  Coecus,  the  Roman 
censor,  313  B.  C,  might  have  answered  for  a  road-bed 
for  a  modern  railway.  But  the  use  of  a  hard  surface 
for  the  bearing  of  the  wheels,  different  from  the 
ordinary  road-bed  itself,  —  the  first  great  discovery 
in  railroad  science,  —  came  into  use  on  the  Stockton 
and  Darlington  road  as  a  tram-way,  where  wooden 
rails  of  a  hard  substance  were  used  in  the  room  of 
iron.     These  wooden  rails   were   afterwards  covered 


26  THE    RAILWAY. 

with  iron  straps,  which  greatly  acceleraterl  the  move- 
ment of  vans  or  coal-carts  drawn  over  them  by  horse- 
power. 

In  1825  the  Liverpool  and  Manchester  Railway  was 
projected,  and  the  directors  instituted  inquiry  into 
the  comparative  advantages  of  horse-power,  station- 
ary steam-engines,  and  locomotive  steam-power,  and 
ofiered  a  premium  of  <£  500  for  a  locomotive  which 
should  not  weigh  over  six  tons,  consume  its  own 
smoke,  and  draw  a  load  of  twenty  tons  ten  miles  an 
hour.  The  Stephensons,  George  and  Robert,  fatlier 
and  son,  in  October,  1829,  produced  their  engine,  the 
"Rocket,"  which  accomplished  the  object  and  won 
the  prize  ;  and  afterwards,  at  the  opening  of  the  Liv- 
erpool and  Manchester  Railway  in  1830,  actually  ran 
at  a  speed  of  twenty-nine  miles  per  hour.  This  es- 
tablished the  superiority  of  the  locomotive-engine, 
and  is  the  date  of  what  we  may  call  the  '•  The  Rail- 
way System." 

I  have  not  time  to  narrate  the  history  of  the  in- 
vention, but  I  may  say,  in  passing,  that  Stephenson's 
success  was  due  to  the  introduction  of  the  tubular 
boiler,  securing  the  largest  possible  amount  of  heat- 
ing surface  and  the  most  rapid  production  of  steam. 
Steam-power  never  has  and  never  can  be  supplanted, 
because  in  no  other  form  has  nature  supplied  power, 
or  the  means  of  power,  in  so  compact,  cheap,  and  ac- 
cessible a  form  as  in  water,  which  is  capable  of  a 
rapid  expansion  into  steam  of  seventeen  hundred 
times  its  own  bulk. 


THE  RAILWAY.  27 

Since  1830  tlic  railway  sj'stem  has  gone  forward 
until  the  whole  civilized  world  has  become  more  de- 
pendent upon  it  than  upon  any  or  all  other  agencies 
put  together. 

During  the  forty-two  years  which  have  elapsed 
since  the  laying  down  of  the  first  railway  on  the 
Stocktcyi  and  Darlington  Railroad  with  strap  iron, 
they  have  been  introduced  into  every  civilized  coun- 
try of  the  globe.  More  than  $2,070,988,008  in  gold 
have  been  invested  in  the  British  Isles  alone  in  railway 
capital,  —  a  sum  greater  than  our  present  national 
debt,  —  with  13,286  miles  of  railroad  in  operation, 
costing  $156,028  per  mile,  on  which  251,862,715  pas- 
sengers travelled  in  the  single  year  1864.  The  peo- 
ple of  England  and  Wales  averaging  nine  journeys  a 
year  for  every  inhabitant,  men,  women,  and  children ; 
those  of  Scotland  6|  journeys  by  each  inhabitant, 
while  in  Ireland  there  are  but  two  journeys  by  each 
individual.  These  acts  show  that  the  density  of 
population,  the  industry  and  productive  powers  of  a 
country,  greatly  aflect  the  extent  of  railway  accom- 
modations. 

The  total  receipts  for  traffic  of  all  the  British  rail- 
ways for  the  year  1865  were  ^179,450,000.  Ex- 
penses, $86,055,000.  Profits,  $93,395,000.  The  Lon- 
don and  Northwestern  Railway,  connecting  Liverpool 
with  London,  has,  with  its  branch  lines,  a  total  of 
1,274  miles  in  length,  with  annual  receipts  exceeding 
$31,000,000.  The  railways  of  England  yield  in  their 
gross  returns  a  little  over  7  per  cent,  while  the  net 
receipts  are  a  trifle  over  4  per  cent. 


28  THE  RAILWAY. 

Great  Britain  and  Ireland  and  the  Channel  Isl- 
ands have  122,557  square  miles  of  territory,  with  a 
population,  in  1861,  of  20,070,930  persons,  or  253  to 
the  square  mile,  and  one  mile  of  railway  to  every 
9;|-  square  miles  of  surfaee. 

In  England  and  Wales,  with  58,320  square  miles 
of  territory,  the  population  is  20,223.740,  averaging 
347  to  the  square  mile,  with  one  mile  of  raiflvay  for 
every  5|  square  miles  of  territory. 

In  Ireland  one  third  the  income  of  railroads  is  de- 
rived from  the  carriage  of  merchandise.  In  England, 
over  one  half.  In  Scotland  two  thirds  the  income  is 
derived  from  the  freiij^ht  of  merchandise  alone.  And 
in  the  State  of  New  York  the  freiy:lit  earnino:s  stand 
in  the  proportion  of  28  to  13  received  from  passen- 
gers. 

As  communities  advance  in  wealth  and  population, 
the  necessaries  and  luxuries  of  life  —  as  represented 
by  freight  transportation  —  increase  far  more  rapidly 
than  passenger  traffic.  This  is  shown  on  our  railways 
in  Maine.  On  the  Maine  Central  Railroad  the  pro- 
portions are  as  follows  for  the  year  named,  ending 


Passengers. 

Freijrht. 

May  1 

,  1851, 

S  60,023.00 

S  37,732.00 

(1 

1860, 

1-15,784.88 

140,987.86 

(( 

1861, 

151,101.06 

151,908.22 

(I 

1862, 

130,316.32 

106,040.30 

(( 

1863, 

178,847.36 

125,614.81 

(( 

1864, 

232,498.89 

150,610.66 

i( 

1865, 

298,902.35 

170,375.88 

7   months, 

1865, 

195,717.09 

126,693.28 

Dec.  31, 

1866, 

291,012.61 

235,479.57 

TIIE   RAILWAY.  29 

On  the  Portland  and  Kennebec  Railroad  the  figures 
for  the  lust  lew  years  show  the  following  results  :  — 


Passensrcrs. 

FrelBht. 

Year  ending  August  31,  1860, 

$  86,y94.49 

S")7,626.5l 

"                    "           1861, 

84,782.54 

63,721.38 

»        December  31,  1864, 

304,917.64 

191.009.31 

"                  "                 18G5, 

285,-291.15 

219,816.13 

"                 "                1866, 

251,485.73 

21*5,796.10 

Maine  has  only  one  mile  of  railway  to  every  sixty- 
two  miles  of  territory.  Massachusetts  has  one  to  every 
six  square  miles,  Connecticut  one  to  every  seven 
square  mile.s,  Ohio  one  to  every  twelve  square  miles, 
Pennsylvania  one  to  every  eleven  square  miles,  and 
Illinois  one  to  every  seventeen  square  miles. 

At  the  close  of  the  year  18GG  there  were  36,896 
miles  of  railway  in  operation  in  the  United  States, 
costing  S  1,502,469,085. 

We  have  in  the  United  States  no  uniform  returns 
like  those  of  other  countries,  showing  the  condition 
and  working  results  of  railways.  New  York  has  the 
most  complete  returns  of  any  State,  showing,  in  1805, 
3,089  miles  of  railway  operated  by  steam,  costing 
$  156,303,203,  or  $50,000  per  mile,  whose  gross  earn- 
ings reached  $  43,712,'i28  per  year,  or  more  than  28 
per  cent  on  their  cost. 

In  New  York  the  average  travel  of  each  passenger 
is  45  miles,  with  91  persons  in  each  train.  Each  ton 
of  freight  is  moved  117  miles  to  75  tons  per  train; 
passengers  are  carried  for  2^^^^  cents  per  mile, 
freight  3j-/^  cents  per  mile. 

In  Massachusetts,  in  1866,  her  1,254  miles  of  road  cost 


30  THE   RAILWAY. 

$  79,460,774  ;  ^14,000,000  of  tliis  ciipitiil  was  invested 
in  roads  that  })ai(l  no  dividends,  while  $  54,531,483 
of  stock  in  dividend-paying  roads  received  ^^W 
per  cent.  The  total  earnings  of  Massachusetts  roads 
in  1860,  operated  by  steam-power,  were  $21,205,527, 
or  an  .average  of  26  per  cent  on  their  cost,  of  which 
amount  $  14,5'>4.230  was  consumed  in  working  ex- 
penses. In  1854  the  earnings  of  the  Massachusetts 
roads  of  the  same  length  were  but  $  9,073,377,  and 
working  expenses  $r),930,110.  In  ten  years,  or  in 
1864,  the  earnings  had  increased  to  $  10,478,596,  and 
the  expenses  to  $  10,490,978. 

These  facts  give  an  idea  of  the  growth  of  railway 
interests  ;  and  it  is  among  the  singular  oversights  of 
Congress,  that  it  litis  not  established  a  Bureau  of  Pub- 
lic Works,  requiring  full  returns  from  railway  compa- 
nies transporting  the  nuiils,  with  accurate  accounts  as 
to  the  extent  of  lines  built,  the  amount  invested  in 
railway  capital,  and  the  economical  results  of  working 
them. 

And  yet  I  well  remember  the  scepticism  and  incre- 
dulity with  which  Stephenson's  first  experiments  in 
locomotion  were  received.  In  1829  1  visited  the 
Legislature  of  Massachusetts.  They  had  under  dis- 
cussion a  resolution,  introduced  by  some  daring  inno- 
vator, expressive  of  the  opinion  that  a  railway  from 
Boston  to  the  Connecticut  River  would  be  of  public 
advantage.  Its  introduction  excited  the  most  intense 
alarm,  endangering  the  credit  of  the  State,  and  de- 


THE   RAILWAY.  31 

stroyiiifT  tlic  value  of  the  public  securities.  '•  Puss  the 
resolutiou,"  said  a  conservative  meuiher,  '^  and  who 
can  predict  the  consequences?  If  we  should  say  hy 
our  acts  tliat  such  a  work  would  be  of  advantaj^e,  who 
can  say  that  some  daring  agitator  may  not  arise  and 
propose  to  put  the  idea  into  practice  ?  and  if  such  a 
work  should  he  undertaken,  public  credit  would  be 
overthrown,  and  every  dollar  of  property  in  the  Com- 
monwealth would  be  in  jeopardy."  80  fierce  was  the 
opposition,  that  it  passed  by  a  majority  of  a  single 
vote.  This  was  only  thirty-eight  years  ago.  These 
facts  show  that  the  wisdom  of  croakers  was  as  potent 
then  as  now  in  resisting  the  progress  of  civiUzed 
ideas. 

I  own  a  large  folio  work,  entitled  "  Proceed iugi-t  of 
the  Committee  of  the  IIoKxe  of  Common.s,  on  the  Llc- 
erjjool  and  Manchester  Railroad  Bill, —  1825  "  ;  and 
it  is  interesting  to  trace  the  history  of  locomotion,  and 
how  clearly  Stephenson  foresaw  the  power  and  value 
of  the  locomotive  railway  at  that  day  ;  and  it  makes 
equally  clear  the  folly  and  weakness  of  the  leading 
men  of  the  time,  who  resisted  his  efforts. 

The  government  of  Great  Britain  failed  to  compre- 
hend the  railway  question,  and  gave  charters  to  indi- 
viduals who  would  undertake  their  construction. 

It  was  not  until  the  advent  of  Mr.  Gladstone  into 
public  life,  some  tw^cnty-five  years  ago,  that  the  gov- 
ernment provided  for  taking  the  railways  as  public 
works  upon  an  agreed  appraisal. 

In  the  United  States  it  was  not  tlien  regarded  as 
within  the  j)owers  or  duties  of  the  general  govern- 


82  TIIK    RAILWAY. 

iiient  to  constriK^t  railroiids,  and  tlu*  mat  tor  was  lofli 
to  tlio  sevoiiil  States.  Cliarters  wore  tenanted,  as  in 
England,  to  parties  oflbring  to  construct  linos,  and 
they  have  b(!on  built  as  private  nndortakings ;  those 
being  soi/od  hold  oi'  lirst  that  held  out  the  largest  sis- 
surance  of  return  of  profit  on  capital.  Hence  the 
railroads  of  the  United  States  have  been  built  for  profit 
mainly,  with  a  view  to  private  advantage  rather  than 
for  the  (levolopnient  of  industry  or  for  the  accotnino- 
dation  of  the  public,  in  the  hirgest  sense  of  that  ex- 
pression. 

It  is  now  obvious  that  railroads  might  have  been 
built  and  managed  with  greater  economy  as  public 
enterprises  than  through  private  corporations,  secur- 
ing exem])tion  from  overbearing  monopoly  on  the  one 
hand,  and  uniformity  of  rates  of  transport,  and  equal 
acconnnodations  for  the  pubhc,  on  the  other. 

Had  Maine  constructed  a  well-devised  svstem  of 
railroads  at  an  early  day,  the  number  of  miles  in  op- 
eration in  this  State  might  have  been  doubled  ;  pas- 
sengers and  freight  transported  at  lessor  rates  than 
now,  with  a  surplus  of  income  adequate  to  the  expen- 
ses of  the  State  government,  and  the  regular  and 
imiform  'vh^  i  of  new  lines,  without  a  dollar  of 
burde  ujjon  <  pital,  or  the  slightest  tax  upon  the 
peo^dc. 

The  railways  of  the  United  States  cost  on  an  aver- 
age $  40,723  per  nnle. 

Those  of  England,  $  150,028  ;  of  France,  $  ]  50,749; 
of  Belgimn,  $  108,025  ;  of  Russia,  $  103,422 ;  of  Prus- 


THE  RAILWAT. 


33 


sia,  $  120,784  ;  of  Austria,  $  71,471  ;  of  llio  siriiiUor 
Gerinaii  states,  $  88,727.  The  avera<j;e  cost  in  Europe 
is  ^  127,091  per  mile.  The  4,653  miles  built  or  pro- 
jected in  British  India,  now  in  process  of  construction, 
are  estimated  to  cost  $  287,000,000,  or  $  00,803  per 
mile. 

The  Great  Western  Railway  of  England,  l)uilt  ])y 
Mr.  Brunei,  extending  from  London  to  Bi'istol,  a  dis- 
tance of  118  miles,  cost  the  following  per  mile,  viz.:  — 


Procuring  Charter, 

Enjfineering, 

Lund  Damages, 

(Inuling, 

SiHHirstruc'ture, 

Motive  Power, 

Inciilental, 


$  8,000 

6,000 

35,000 

159,600 

47,000 

25,000 

3,300 


The  progress  of  railway  ''jonstriiction  in  this  coun- 
try from  1828  to  the  eni  of  18GC,  used  by  steam 
power,  without  reckoning  anything  for  double  tracks 
or  sidings,  has  been  as  follows  :  — 


Year  1828, 

3 

miles. 

Year 

1843, 

4,174  miles 

u 

1829, 

28 

«( 

u 

1844, 

4,311 

u 

<( 

1830, 

41 

u 

(( 

1845, 

4,522 

u 

(( 

1831, 

54 

u 

(( 

1846, 

4,870 

K 

(1 

1832, 

131 

u 

u 

1847, 

5,326 

U 

u 

1833, 

576 

(t 

« 

1848, 

5.682 

U 

u 

1834, 

762 

l( 

(( 

1849, 

6,350 

(( 

(1 

1835, 

918 

l( 

« 

1850, 

7,475 

U 

<( 

1836, 

1,102 

u 

(( 

1851, 

8,589 

<( 

(( 

1837, 

1,421 

(( 

(( 

1852, 

11,027 

i( 

(1 

1838, 

1,843 

(( 

(( 

1853, 

13,497 

(( 

u 

1839, 

1,920 

l( 

« 

1854, 

15,672 

u 

(1 

1840, 

3,197 

It 

<( 

1855, 

17,398 

l( 

t( 

1841, 

3,319 

u 

« 

1856, 

19,251 

u 

<( 

1842, 

3,877 

3 

u 

(i 

1857, 

> 

22,615 

(( 

34 


i 

THE 

RAILWAY. 

Year  ISoS, 

2:),0n0  miles. 

Year  18G3, 

32,471 

miles, 

"     1859, 

2(),7r)5     " 

"      1S(M, 

33,860 

(t 

"     18G0, 

28,771     " 

"      18Gr>, 

34,442 

u 

"     1801, 

30,593     '« 

"      1866, 

35,361 

t( 

"  1862,   31,769  "  "   1867,      36,896   " 

At  the  close  of  the  year  1866,  95,727  miles  of  rail- 
road had  been  constructed  in  the  world,  principally  in 
Europe  and  the  United  States  of  America,  —  a  vast 
achievement  for  a  single    generation*       The   work 
of  the  present  generation  is  to  be,  not  so  much  rail- 
road construction  as  railroad  reform.     The  vast  smns 
wasted  in  the  construction  of  railroads,  through  igno- 
rance and  inexperience,  are  of  tritling  amount  as  com- 
pared with  the  waste  now  going  on  in  railway  man- 
agement.    Practical  skill  and  persistent  industry  are 
absorbed  by  the  Express  Companies,  who  take  mto 
their  own  hi'.^vls  the  cream  of  railway  traffic  through 
superior  skill  and  economy  in  conducting  their  busi- 
ness, if  they  do  not  control  the  leading  lines  by  com- 
binations with  portions  of  Boards  of  Directors  at  the 
expense  of  tlie  stockholders  and  the  general  public. 

The  Erie  Railroad,  in  1866,  earned  $14,596,413.09; 
of  which  $12,358,307  was  consumed  in  working 
expenses  and  government  charges,  leaving  only 
$2,238,106.09  of  net  income  on  a  cost  of  $47,341,130. 
On  many  other  roads  the  figures  would  show  results 
equally  striking,  calling  for  a  complete  reform  in  rail- 
way management.  Possibly  the  Express  Companies 
themselves,  with  their  corps  of  skilled  conductors  and 
employees,  will  take  the  railroad  upon  a  fair  rental,  as 
the  shortest  mode  of  relief  to  unfortunate  stockhold- 

*  See  Appendix. 


THE  RAILWAY.  35 

ers.  If  the  Grand  Trunk  line  of  railway  to-day  was 
placed  in  the  charge  of  the  Eastern  Express  Com- 
pany, it  would  yield  twice  the  amount  of  its  present 
net  income. 

Railways  require  men  of  the  highest  skill,  of  the 
keenest  intellect,  and  of  executive  ability  in  their 
management ;  and  a  superintendent  who  manages  a 
long  line  by  telegraph,  without  proper  local  responsi- 
bility, is  in  the  condition  in  which  General  Scott  found 
himself  as  commander-in-chief  of  the  army  of  the 
United  States  at  the  first  battle  of  Bull  Run,  —  the 
movements  of  which  he  directed  from  the  secure 
asylum  of  his  office  in  Washington  City. 

In  the  United  States,  railroads  have  cost  less  than 
in  any  other  country,  and  can  therefore  carry  at  less 
rates;  and  it  is  here  that  railroad  reform  should  begin. 
As  a  general  rule,  railways  are  not  worked  to  one 
fifth  of  their  capacity,  and  there  is  no  proper  discrim- 
ination in  charges  ^between  slow  and  ftist  trains.  To 
transport  goods  or  passengers  at  the  rate  of  twenty 
miles  per  hour  costs  live  times  as  much  as  to  move 
the  same  at  ten  miles  an  hour.  Increase  the  speed 
of  transit  to  forty  miles  an  hour,  and  it  costs  five  times 
as  much  as  at  twenty  miles  an  hour.  The  cost  of 
transit,  therefore,  if  roads  are  in  good  condition,  is  in 
exact  ratio  to  the  speed  of  trains ;  the  increased  cost 
of  moving  being  as  the  square  of  the  velocity.  On 
express  trains  in  England  the  charge  for  passengers 
is  24  shillings  for  100  miles,  or  5|  and  G  cents  per 
mile,  while  on  the  slow  trains  it  is  only  one  third  of 
this.     Freight  is  transported  much  cheaper  in  England 


36  THE   RAILWAY. 

than  ill  the  United  States,  while  in  Belgium,  where 
railroads  are  numerous,  and  the  population  more 
dense  than  in  any  other  European  country,  the  tran- 
sit of  passengers  and  goods  is  cheaper  than  in  any 
other  portion  of  the  globe. 

•  Reforms  must  commence  with  us,  therefore,  by  a 
proper  discrunination  in  favor  of  slow  trains ;  those 
who  seek  the  highest  speed  paying  in  proportion. 
The  need  of  this  has  led  to  the  adoption  on  the  Lon- 
don and  Northwestern  Railway,  between  London 
and  Liverpool,  of  a  method  of  taking  in  water  fished 
up  in  side  tanks  by  spouts,  through  ilexible  tuljes, 
while  the  train  is  moving  at  the  rate  of  forty  miles  to 
the  hour.  And  so  great  has  been  the  increase  of 
business  between  Liverpool  and  Manchester,  that 
more  trains  arrive  and  depart  daily  from  a  single  sta- 
tion on  that  line,  than  all  the  trains  that  arrive  at 
and  depart  from  the  city  of  Boston  daily,  over  the 
seven  trunk  lines  of  road  terminating  in  that  city. 

It  is  easy  to  perceive,  therefore,  why  railroad  re- 
form must  commence  wdth  us.  As  soon  as  there  is 
sulhcient  business  upon  a  road  to  pay  the  running  of 
trains  and  interest  on  cost,  the  price  for  carrying  pas- 
sengers and  freight  should  diminish  in  exact  propor- 
tion to  the  increase  o£  business.  This  reduction  oper- 
ates like  a  charm  in  the  development  of  new  business, 
the  value  of  heavy  products  of  the  interior,  such  as 
cord-wood,  ship-timber,  building  material,  slate,  and 
farm  products,  multiply  almost  in  geometric  progres- 
sion ;  so  that  coarser  articles,  produced  one  hundred 
miles  from  the  open  sea,  or  from  a  local  market,  not 


THE   RAILWAY.  37 

worth  the  cost  of  transportation  by  the  ordinary 
modes,  become  as  vahiable  as  those  fomid  or  grown 
at  tide-water,  or  in  the  neighborhood  of  great  cities. 
But  it  is  no  time  to  fohow  out  these  details  ;  the  facts 
given  may  serve  as  hints  as  to  the  direction  to  which 
practical  ability  is  to  be  turned.  The  coarser  work 
of  constructing  the  road-bed  of  railways  is  now  un- 
derstood, and  we  cannot  expect  any  diminution  in 
the  cost  of  building  it ;  but  in  the  construction  of 
machinery,  in  the  quality  of  the  superstructure,  in 
the  economy  of  management,  and  in  the  supply  of 
comforts  to  the  traveller,  great  changes  are  to  take 
place.  Wooden  sleepers,  kianized  or  preserved  in 
creosote,  will  outlast  the  iron  rail,  if  not  maintain  a  life 
equal  to  that  of  the  steel  rail,  which  is  gradually  taking 
the  place  of  the  iron  rail,  being  more  than  five  times  as 
durable.  Steel  boilers  for  locomotive  engines  will 
supersede  iron  ones,  and  cars  will  be  adjusted  with 
conveniences,  comforts,  and  even  luxuries,  unknown 
at  this  day,  enabling  travellers  to  cross  the  Continent 
without  fatigue,  and  allbrding  to  business  men  facili- 
ties for  carrying  on  conununication  by  letter  or  tele- 
graph while  cars  are  in  motion,  and  to  men  of  letters 
opportunity  to  prepare  their  manuscripts  or  correct 
their  proofs  while  enjoying  the  luxury  of  travel. 

You  all  know  the  condition  of  things  in  Maine  at 
the  assembling  of  the  last  Legislature.  The  long  pe- 
riod from  the  days  of  prosperity  under  the  governor- 
ship of  Enoch  Lincoln  to  those  of  (Jleneral  Chamber- 
lain had  been  a  gloomy  one  for  Maine.     The  strug- 


38  THE   RAILWAY. 

gles  for  personal  success  in  politics  had  been  para- 
mount ideas,  with  few  intermittent  exceptions. 

Our  public  domain  had  been  squ;  idered  without 
producing  a  single  public  work  for  our  State,  while 
Massachusetts'  share  of  the  land  aided  in  building  the 
Western  Railroad,  and  created  for  her  a  large  school 
fund;  3,207,680  acres  of  our  public  lands  were  wrested 
from  us  by  Great  Britain,  without  a  shadow  of  claim  to 
them ;  a  policy  was  introduced  unfriendly  to  railroads 
and  manufactures  ;  and,  to  crown  the  whole,  the  State, 
by  constitutional  inhibition,  tied  itself  up  from  aiding 
public  improvements,  apparently  for  the  benefit  of 
other  States,  so  that  our  young  men  might  emigrate, 
and  property  decline  in  value.  For  thirty  years 
Maine  seemed  steadily  fldling  back  in  the  race  of 
empire. 

The  promoters  of  your  enterprise,  feeling  its  im- 
portance, but  finding  no  better  means  of  carrying  it 
forward,  asked  permission  for  the  cities  and  towns 
interested  to  be  allowed  the  privilege  of  taking 
upon  themselves  the  risk  incident  to  its  construc- 
tion ;  and  a  plan  was  proposed,  somewhat  novel  in 
its  character,  it  is  true,  but  one  that  must  meet  the 
cordial  approval  of  parties  who  sincerely  desire  the 
construction  of  the  road,  —  the  assumption  of  the 
risk  by  the  several  cities  and  towns  upon  its  route, 
to  an  amount  equal  to  twenty  jier  cent  of  their 
valuation.  This  is  represented  by  non-preferred 
stock,  insuring  the  control  of  the  road  concur- 
rently with  the  risk  assumed ;  or,  in  other  words, 
those  that  wanted  the  road  could  build  it,  own  and 


THE   RAILWAY.  39 

control  it :  the  property  of  that  unfortunate  class 
in  every  town  who  own  lands  and  stores,  but  who 
do  not  choose  voluntarily  to  share  their  part  of  the 
burden  of  building  it,  being  held  for  their  share, 
and  no  more. 

Municipalities,  —  to^vns,  cities,  and  boroughs, — 
antedate  State  constitutions.  Local  organizations 
for  self-preservation,  —  mutual  protection  and  im- 
provement, aud  for  police  and  sanitary  j^urposes, 
whether  of  Greek  or* Saxon  origin,  —  are  the  ear- 
liest forms  of  civil  government,  —  as  distinguished 
from  military  rule,  —  based  upon  the  principle  of 
equality  among  men.  A  majority,  by  vote,  took 
private  property  for  public  piu'poses,  —  opening 
roads,  building  bridges,  clearing  streams,  erecting 
mills,  —  making  all  the  property  and  persons  of  the 
municipality  share  the  burden  equally.  No  one  can 
see  any  substantial  distinction  in  the  principle 
adopted,  to  meet  new  wants,  ^  allowing  subscrip- 
tions to  railroads. 

You  had,  in  the  county  of  Waldo,  in  18G0,  a 
valuation  of  ^7,740,429,  showhig  an  increased 
valuation  of  only  36  per  cent  from  1850  to  1860, 
while  the  county  of  Cumberland  showed  an  in- 
creased valuation  of  116  per  cent  from  1850  to 
1860  upon  her  previous  large  valuation,  —  which 
increase  was  due  to  the  construction  of  railroads, 
more  especially  to  the  growth  of  Porthuid,  conse- 
quent on  the  construction  of  the  railway  from  Port- 
land to  Montreal. 


40  THE   RAILWAY. 

Two  descriptions  of  property  are  mainly  bene- 
fited by  the  construction  of  niih'oads,  —  farms  and 
woodland  on  the  route,  and  fixed  property  near 
way-stations  and  the  main  terminus.  Farms  de- 
crease in  value  in  exact  ratio  of  their  distance 
from  market. 

In  1852  the  editor  of  the  Railroad  Journal  pre- 
pared a  statement  showing  the  extent  and  work- 
ing capacity  of  railways,  with  tables  illustrating  the 
value  of  a  fon  of  wheat  and  a  ton  of  corn  as  affected 
by  cost  of  transportation,  which  was  reprinted  in 
different  languages  of  Europe,  and  became  author- 
ity with  railway  men,  like  tables  of  mortality  in 
life  insurance,  as  follows :  — 

"Upon  the  ordinary  highways,  the  economical 
limit  to  transportation  is  confined  within  a  compara- 
tively few  miles,  depending  of  course  upon  the 
kind  of  freight  and  character  of  the  roads.  Upon 
the  average  of  such  w'ays,  the  cost  of  transporta- 
tion is  not  far  from  fifteen  cents  per  ton  per  mile, 
which  niav  be  considered  as  a  sutHciently  correct 
estimate  for  the  whole  country.  Estimating:  at  the 
same  time  the  value  of  wheat  at  $  1.50  per  bushel, 
and  corn  at  75  cents,  and  that  thirtv-three  bushels 
of  each  are  equal  to  a  ton,  the  value  of  the  former 
would  be  equal  to  its  cost  of  transportation  for  330 
miles,  and  the  latter  165  miles.  At  these  respec- 
tive distances  from  market,  neither  of  the  above 
articles  would  have  any  commercial  value,  with  only 
a  common  earth  road  as  an  avenue  to  market. 


THE   RAILWAY.  41 

"But  we  find  tliat  we  can  move  property  upon 
railroads  at  the  rate  of  1^-  cent  per  ton  per  mile, 
or  for  one  tenth  the  cost  upon  the  ordinary  road. 
These  works,  therefore,  extend  the  economical  limits 
of  the  cost  of  transportation  of  the  ahove  articles 
to  3,300  and  1,G50  miles  respectively.  At  the  limit 
o*'  the  economical  movement  of  these  articles  upon 
the  common  highways,  by  the  use  of  railroads 
wheat  would  be  worth  $44.50  and  corn  $22.27 
per  ton,  which  sums  respectively  would  represent 
the  actual  increase  of  value  created  by  the  inter- 
position of  such  a  work. 

"  The  following  table  will  show  the  amount  saved 
per  ton,  by  transportation  by  railroads,  over  the 
ordinary  highways  of  the  country." 

Statement  fhowiiif/  the  Value  of  a  Ton  of  Wheat  and  one  of  Corn  at  given 
Points  from  Market,  as  affected  hy  Cost  of  Transportation  hj  Railroad 
and  over  the  ordinary  Road. 

Transportation  by  Transportation  by 

Railroad.  onliuary  Highway. 


Miles  from 
Marlitit. 

r 
Wheat. 

A'ALCE  ATM 

Corn. 

ARKKT 

Wheat. 

Corn. 

0 

$49.50 

$24.75 

S  49.50 

S  24.75 

10 

49.35 

24.60 

48.00 

23.25 

20 

49,20 

24.45 

46.50 

21.75 

80 

49.05 

24.30 

45.00 

20.25 

40 

45.90 

24.15 

43.50 

18.75 

50 

48.71 

24.00 

42.00 

17.25 

60 

48.60 

23.85 

40.o0 

15.75 

70 

48.45 

23.70 

39.00 

14.25 

80 

48.30 

23.55 

37.50 

12.75 

90 

48.15 

23.40 

36.00 

11.25 

100 

48.00 

23.25 

34.50 

9.75 

110 

47.85 

23.10 

33.00 

8.25 

120 

47.70, 

22.95 

31.;)0 

6.75 

130 

47.55 

22.80 

30.00 

5.25 

42  THE   RAILWAY. 


Transportation  by  Transpnrtntion  by 

Bailruad.  orJiuiiry  Highway. 


Mil(!A  from 

Wheat. 

..   .Valck  at 
Ciirn. 

MlBCKT. 

Market. 

Wheat. 

Corn. 

140 

$47.40 

$  22.65 

$  28.50 

S3.75 

150 

47.25 

22.50 

27.00 

2.25 

160 

47.10 

22.35 

25.50 

75 

170 

46.95 

22.20 

24.00 

00 

180 

46.80 

22.05 

22.50 

190 

46.65 

21.90 

21.00 

200 

46.50 

21.75 

19.50 

210 

46.35 

21.60 

18.00 

220 

46.20 

21.45 

16.50 

230 

46.05 

21.30 

15.00 

240 

4.^). 90 

21.15 

13.50 

2r)0 

45.75 

21.00 

12.00 

2G0 

45.60 

20.85 

10.50 

270 

45.45 

20.70 

9.00 

280 

45.30 

20.55 

7.50 

290 

45.15 

20.40 

6.00 

300 

45.00 

20.25 

4.50 

310 

44.85 

20.10 

3.00 

320 

44.70 

19.95 

1.50 

330 

44.55 

19.80 

00 

Apply  these  rules  to  hay,  potatoes,  lumber,  slate, 
and  other  products  of  Maine  on  your  line,  and  you 
see  at  a  glance  how  much  wealth  will  be  created 
by  the  building  of  your  road. 

Ohio  statistics  illustrate  the  principle  as  well  as 
any.  In  1829  wheat  was  worth  twenty-five  cents  a 
bushel  at  Cincinnati,  and  corn  ten  cents,  but  they 
had  no  access  to  a  distant  market.  The  State  built 
canals,  but  these  were  slow  coaches.  Then  came 
railroads.  Ohio  seized  hold  of  them  and  rose  rap- 
idly in  wealth,  greatness,  and  power,  and  is  to-day 
the  third  State  of  the  Union. 


THE   RAILWAY.  43 

In  1841  her  valuation  was  but  $128,353,057,  and 
in  1845  it  reached  $145,100,409,  —  less  than  that  of 
Maine  in  1800;  in  1847  she  had  202  miles  of  rail- 
way only,  in  1850,  575  miles,  in  1800,  2,099  miles, 
and  in  1800,  3,402  miles.  Iler  valuation  for  taxa- 
tion rose  to  $433,872,032,  in  1850;  to  $800,877,354, 
in  1855,  and  to  $959,807,100,  in  1800,  with  an  act- 
ual valuation  in  1800  of  $1,193,898,422,  against 
an  actual  valuation  of  $504,720,120  in  1850,  an 
absolute  increase  of  $089,172,300,  while  her  3,402 
miles  of  railway  cost  only  $135,231,975.  Ohio  al- 
lowed towns,  cities,  and  counties  to  aid  railroads, 
and  you  see  the  result. 

The  following  table  shows  the  polls  and  valua- 
tion of  Maine  at  the  several  periods  named :  — 


Years. 

Polls. 

Estates. 

1810 

61,938 

S  1,443,138 

1820 

59,368 

20,962,748 

1830 

6G,986 

28,807,687 

1840 

86,544 

68,240,288 

1845 

89,054 

67,219,356 

18.")0 

105,490 

100,037,969 

18G0 

128,899 

164,714,168 

The  value  of  farms  in  Maine  increased  from 
$54,801,748  in  1850  to  $78,090,725  in  1800,  or 
$23,828,977,  or  at  the  rate  of  forty-one  per  cv^nt, 
while  in  Ohio  the  value  of  farms  increased  from 
$358,758,003  in  1850  to  $000,504,171  in  1800,  or 
$307,805,508,  or  at  the  rate  of  eighty-nine  per  cent. 
The  farms  of  Maine  average  97  acres,  those  of  Ohio 
125  acres.     The  value  of  farms  in  Maine  is  about 


44  TIIE   RAILWAY. 

$14  per  acre,  Ohio  about  $33  per  acre.  The  Ohio 
farniH  produced  in  1800  but  12  bushels  of  wheat 
per  acre,  but  tlie  price  has  advanced  tenfold  since 
1829,  and  is  now  wortli  $  2.50  per  bushel  in  Ohio. 

I  might  cite  examples  of  States  nearer  liome. 
Rhode  Island,  Massachusetts,  and  even  New  Jersey, 
States  far  inferior  in  natural  advantages,  which  ad- 
vanced more  rapidly  than  Maine  from  1850  to  1800, 
on  account  of  greater  railroad  facilities,  and  the  de- 
velopment of  industry  from  better  access  to  market. 

But  there  is  nothing  so  striking  in  American  his- 
tory as  the  progress  of  the  Northwest,  consequent 
ujDon  the  introduction  of  railways. 

Maine  produces  hay  and  potatoes,  more  profitable 
crops  than  wheat.  Waldo  County  annually  raises 
50,000  tons  of  hay,  000,000  bushels  of  potatoes,  and 
other  crops  in  proportion,  more  than  one  half  of 
them  in  the  towns  on  your  line  to  Newport.  These 
products  will  command  about  the  same  price  on  the 
line  of  the  railway  as  in  Belfast;  and  the  question  is, 
ftot  whether  you  can  have  the  railroad,  but  can  you 
aflbrd  to  live  without  it  ? 

Ship-building  has  been  a  prolific  source  of  w-ealth 
to  Maine,  and  the  city  of  Belfast  has  been  prominent 
from  the  number  of  her  vessels  built  and  the  amount 
of  tonnage  here  owned.  In  1854  there  were  built 
in  the  district  of  Belfast  forty-nine  vessels,  equal  to 
20,246  tons  ;  and  the  tonnage  owned  in  this  district 
in  1854  was  55,899  tons,  and  in  18C2  it  had  reached 
95,000  tons,  according  to  the  returns  from  the  Treas- 


THE    RAILWAY.  46 

iirv  DopiirtnuMit.  It  is  the  opinion  of  the  liost  in- 
foniRMl  coinniercial  uwn  ol'  this  country  that  sailing 
.ships  are  losing  their  importance,  and  cannot  renain 
their  former  rehitive  standing,  from  the  competition 
of  steamers.  Sailing  vessels  are  to  the  steamship 
what  the  stage-coach  is  to  the  railway,  auxiliaries  and 
side  supports,  but  not  competitors  on  great  lines.  The 
railway  is  every  day  drawing  more  and  more,  both 
of  freight  and  passengers,  from  the  estal)lished  lines 
of  steamers,  and  the  steamers  are  gradually  taking 
the  business  known  as  the  coasting  trade  from  the 
sailing  vessels.  Wharf  property  has  declined  in  the 
city  of  Boston,  in  consequence  of  this,  to  nearly  one 
half  its  former  value.  The  dt  livery  of  freight  from 
railway  cars  is  more  convenient  than  from  vessels, 
and  a  lari2:e  freiij-ht  business  is  now  carried  on  be- 
tween  Portland  and  Boston  hy  railway  jdongside 
navigable  waters,  notwithstanding  steamers  of  the 
best  class  and  well  managed,  and  sailing  vessels,  car- 
ry at  the  lowest  rates.  It  may  be  well  for  the  intel- 
ligent shipbuilders  of  Maine  to  consider  these  facts, 
coupled  with  the  discrimination  against  ships,  under 
our  existing  tariff  Railways,  on  the  contrary,  are 
enabled  every  year  to  carry  at  lower  rates,  and  as 
business  increases,  so  that  railroads  can  be  worked  up 
to  their  capacity,  passengers  and  merchandise  will  be 
carried  at  less  than  one  half  the  present  prices  for 
traViSportation. 

I  never  advocated  the  building  of  a  railwav  on  the 
ground  of  the  profitable  investment  of  capital,  but 
upon  the  same  ground  as  I  would  advocate  the  build- 


46  THE    UAILWAY. 

iiiijf  of  connnon  lii^hwjiyH  JUid  Hcliool-liouses".  Tlioy 
may  prove  piofiliihlc,  but  this  dcpomls  on  a  variety 
of  circiitustanoes;  such  as  jucHeious  location,  economy 
in  l)uil(linfi;,  favorable  connections  with  other  roads, 
and  proper  manaj^ement.  Tliey  used  to  cost  ftcice 
their  estimate,  but  return  in  a  Jinfohl  measure  all 
they  cost,  in  increased  wealth,  substantial  comforts, 
and  innumerable  pleasures. 

Risks  necessarily  occur  in  all  business  nndertalv- 
ings,  ])ut  prudent  men  learn  something  from  the  pub- 
lic experience,  and  the  chances  are  in  favor  of  com- 
mon fidelity  in  the  carrying  out  your  plnns. 

If  the  railroad  is  once  built,  it  will  draw  to  it  all 
the  business  that  is  possible.  It  carries  cheaply  to 
induce  production  and  transportaticm,  and  imparts  to 
evervthin<»:  in  its  route  a  value  imknown  before.  In 
Scotland,  where  industry  is  active  and  men  intelli- 
gent, the  very  offal  of  cities,  —  the  prolific  cause  of- 
sickness  and  death  in  many  cities,  —  pays  a  hand- 
some profit  to  the  railway  com})any  for  its  transpor- 
tation into  the  country  for  farm  maiuu'e. 

An  intelligent  English  writer  estimates  that  the 
manure  of  Great  Britain  produces  more  wealth  an- 
nually than  the  cotton  manufactures  !  If  Maine  had 
railroads  like  Scotland  or  the  North  of  England,  whose 
soil,  climate,  and  natural  features  are  like  those  of 
Maine,  our  State  might  have  a  population  equally 
dense  as  theirs,  with  all  the  comforts,  luxuries,  and 
refinements  which  came  in  the  train  of  industrious 
hal)its,  aggregated  wealth,  and  concentrated  popula- 
tion. 


THE   RAILWAY.  47 

The  sonret  of  the  prof^ress  of  the  West.  ;iii(l  the 
viiHt  power  of  her  publico  men,  is  the  Union  of  senti- 
ment in  fiivor  of  publie  improvements  amon^  all 
classes  of  its  ])e()ple.  Men  come  forward  and  }»e- 
come  leaders  in  proportion  to  their  earne.-tness  and 
comprehension  in  favor  of  pnhli(;  improvements. 
This  was  the  secret  of  the  marvellons  power  of 
Donglas  and  the  strength  of  the  popnlarity  of 
Lincoln.  However  bitter  might  be  their  personal 
hostilities,  no  matter  how  strong  the  anta<j;onism  of 
parties  on  other  issnes,  all  nnited  as  one  man  to 
carry  forward  railroads,  and  bring  capital  into  their 
snpport.  The  prosperity  of  the  State  was  the  com- 
mon ambition  of  ])()litical  men,  regardless  of  party 
organization  or  party  names. 

The  principle  of  granting  alternate  sections  of 
pnblic  lands  in  aid  of  railroads  has  helped  the  North- 
west, and  covered  Iowa  with  a  netwoik  of  railways 
of  almost  as  nniform  a  texture  as  if  woven  bv  ma- 
chinery,  —  and  her  public  men  justly  taunt  New 
England  with  cowardice  who  shirk  responsibility, 
and  shrink  from  maintaining  and  defending  their 
own  rights. 

The  claims  of  Maine  and  Massachusetts  upon  the 
United  States  may  be  cited  as  an  example. 

The  General  Government  owes  Maine  and  Massa- 
chusetts interest  on  the  war  debt  of  1812  - 15.  Dur- 
ing the  administrationof  General  Taylor  the  principle 
was  established,  upon  the  advice  of  the  Attorney-Gen- 
eral, Hon.  Eeverdy  Johnson,  the  ablest  lawyer  of  the 
country  to-day,  that  interest  should  be  paid  by  the 


48  THE   RAILWAY. 

General  Government  in  the  yame  manner  as  ])y  indi- 
vidual debtors. 

And  the  payment  of  interest  on  llie  Galpliin  claim 
was  liowled  thi-ougli  the  land  by  all  the  miserable 
party  hacks  of  the  country  as  a  gross  fraud  upon  the 
Treasury.  But  no  honest  mind  can  see  any  good 
reason  why  a  man  dealing  with  the  Government 
should  not  fare  as  well  as  dealing  with  an  individual. 
If  1  owe  my  neighl)or  a  del)t,  and  cannot  meet  it 
when  it  is  due,  there  is  no  reason  why  I  shoidd  not 
pay  him  interest  during  the  time  I  keep  him  out  of 
the  use  of  the  money.  Such  was  the  deliberate  de- 
cision of  Conu'ress  and  the  Executive  during  the  ad- 
ministration  of  Mr.  Buchanan  in  1857,  and  such  since 
then  has  been  the  established  policy  of  the  Govern- 
ment. 

Maine  and  Massachusetts  ask  that  this  principle, 
known  as  that  of  the  Maryland  case,  be  ajjplied  to 
their  own  debt,  and  that  the  interest  due  on  the  war 
debt  should  l)e  paid.  These  del)ts  have  l)een  assigned 
by  the  two  States  to  aid  the  construction  of  the  In- 
ternational Railway,  and  if  we  shall  succeed  in  making 
these  claims  imderstood  by  our  Senatoi-s  and  Repre- 
sentatives in  Congress,  they  will  be  paid,  —  confi- 
dence in  this  iulJiiences  the  judgment  of  capitalists 
and  railroad  men  in  other  States,  tliougli  it  has  failed 
heretofore  to  couHiiand  suflicient  assent  at  home. 

Maine  ought  to  fall  behind  in  the  I'ace  of  ])rogress 
if  she  will  be  led  ))y  the  paltering  jxilicy  of  sellish 
men,  who  have  not  the  manhood  to  stand  up  for  the 
rights  of  their  own  State  in  CoiiLcress. 


THE   RAILWAY.  49 

Skill  in  finance  does  not  consist  in  striking  from 
an  appropriation  bill  an  item  for  the  payment  of  an 
honest  debt,  but  rather  in  the  adoption  of  measures 
that  shall  develop  enterprise,  stimulate  industry,  en- 
large the  circle  of  trade,  and  create  new  means  of 
supply  to  the  National  Treasury. 

Modern  philosophy  has  established  the  fact,  that 
the  climate  and  physical  features  of  a  country  de- 
velop the  race  not  only  in  physical  strength  and 
power  of  endurance,  but  to  the  highest  attainments 
in  science,  {irt,  and  civilized  ideas.  If  any  one  fact 
as  to  our  State  is  more  clearly  established  than 
any  other,  it  is  this,  that  in  climate  and  physical 
resources  Maine  is  the  most  favored  section  of  the 
country. 

The  noblest  men  of  the  late  war  went  forth  from 
our  midst,  and  those  who  did  not  give  up  their  lives 
in  the  service  have  returned  to  the  ranks  as  citizens 
with  enlarged  views  and  clearer  knowledge  of  the  ad- 
vantages of  our  State.  Experience  in  manufactures 
has  demonstrated  the  fact,  that  laborers  can  work 
throughout  the  year  in  our  shops  and  fac  tories  with 
less  diminution  of  physical  strength  than  in  any 
other  portion  of  the  country,  giving  an  advantage 
to  Maine  e(iuivalent  to  ten  per  cent  over  the  in- 
land States  and  those  lying  farther  south.  Our 
future  iuiportance  as  a  State  will  depend  upon  our 
devotion  to  practical  ideas  in  the  developuient  of 
manufactures.  The  water-power  of  Maine  is  her 
strength. 


60  THE   RAILWAY. 

When  the  King  visited  Watt's  steam-engine,  and 
saw  its  workings,  he  was  puzzled  to  know  how  it 
coukl  be  turned  to  account.  "  You  are  a  mechanic," 
said  he  to  Watt,  "  and  Uve  upon  what  you  can  pro- 
duce and  sell.  What  do  you  sell  ? "  "  Power,"  re- 
plied the  modest  artisan.  Power  is  the  great  object 
of  civilization.  Vast  empires,  huge  armies,  —  the 
aggregation  of  physical  force,  —  these  are  the  great 
ideas  of  modern  times.  A  nation  which  has  power 
is  felt  throughout  the  civilized  world.  The  power  of 
England  lies  hi  her  climate  and  her  coal-fields.  Here 
has  been  her  strength  in  modern  warfare.  Coal  made 
her  superior  to  France.  The  steam-engine  of  Watt 
and  the  spinning-jenny  of  Arkwright  conquered  at 
Leipsic  and  overthrew  Napoleon  at  Waterloo.  Wa- 
ter-power is  the  cheapest  of  all  agencies  in  the  pro- 
duction of  wealth  ;  and  a  nation  with  water-power 
is  great  in  exact  proportion  to  its  extent,  availability, 
and  development.  Look  at  the  power  now  running 
to  waste  in  Maine,  and  form  an  estimate  of  her  future 
greatness. 

It  was  my  good  fortune  to  witness  the  first  experi- 
ment ill  locomotion  in  New  England.  The  Boston 
and  Worcester  Railroad  Company  in  1834  imported 
from  Newcastle-upon-Tyne  one  of  George  Stephen- 
son's locomotives,  —  not  unlike  those  placed  on  the 
Bangor  and  Oldtown  road  in  183G,  —  small  in  -stat- 
ure, but  symmetrical  in  every  particular,  and  finished 
with  the  exactness  of  a  chronometer.  Placed  upon 
the  track,  its  driver,  who  came  with  it  from  England, 


Till   RAILWAY.  61 

stepped  upon  the  platform  with  ahnost  the  airs  of  a 
juggler  or  a  professor  of  chemistry,  placed  his  hand 
upon  the  lever,  and  with  a  slight  move  of  it  the  en- 
gine started  at  a  speed  worthy  of  the  companion  of 
the  "Rocket,"  amid  the  shouts  and  cheers  of  the 
multitude.  It  gave  me  such  a  shock  that  my  hair 
seemed  to  start  from  the  roots  rather  than  to  st.ind 
on  end ;  and  as  I  reflected  in  after  years,  the  loco- 
motive-engine grew  into  a  greatness  in  my  mind  that 
left  all  other  created  things  far  behind  it  as  marvels 
and  wonders. 

Great  as  have  been  the  improvements  in  imple- 
ments of  agriculture,  in  manufactures  by  the  spin- 
ning-jenny, the  power-loom,  and   the   mule-spinner, 
in  means  of  transit  by   the    steamship,  in    the   art 
of  exact  transfer  of  objects  in  picture  by  the  pho- 
tograph,   they   are   as   nothing  compared  with    the 
omnipotent  power  of  the  locomotive  railway,  —  the 
great  achievement  of  man,  the  most  extraordinary 
instrument  for  good  the  world  has  yet  reached, — 
throwing  far  into  shade  the  fabled  deities  of  ancient 
mythology  and  the  boasted  virtues  of  the  Lamp  of 
Aladdin.     The  Railway  has  done  more  to  relieve  the 
burdens  of  labor,  to  minister  to  man's  wants  and  ne- 
cessities, and  to  elevate  him  in  the  scale  of  bein«- 
than  all  the  agencies  heretofore  known  to  him.     Its 
trains  traverse  the  earth  with  a  speed  outstrippino* 
the  bird  upon  the  wing  or  the  sweep  of  the  resistless 
hurricane,  and  enable  man  without  danger  and  with- 
out fatigue  to  transfer  himself  to  distant  lands  and 


52  TIIE   RAILWAY. 

more  genial  climes  at  will,  and  to  participate  in  all 
the  physical  enjoyments  and  refined  pleasures  of  city 
or  coinitry  life,  as  the  varying  seasons  make  these  al- 
ternations or  the  other  of  them,  most  agreeable  to  his 
taste  or  inclination. 

Migration  is  the  secret  of  health,  and  variety  of 
production  the  great  means  of  physical  gratification. 
The  railway  gives  to  one  community  the  ideas,  the 
tastes,  and  the  productions  of  every  other,  disclosing 
or  creating  new  sources  of  enjoyment,  and  multiply- 
ing to  .'in  infinite  degree  every  susceptibility  to  pleas- 
ural)le  emotion. 

The  railway  is  in  its  infancy,  and  yet  it  has  con- 
quered the  world.  The  military,  political,  and  com- 
mercial movements  of  the  age,  all  acknowledged  its 
power,  and  each  obeys  its  laws  ;  social  progress,  intel- 
lectual refinement,  and  moral  culture  are  the  fruits 
of  its  labors.  It  is  ever  advancing.  It  will  in  time 
overcome  the  inconveniences  of  climate  and  geo- 
graphical position,  so  that  the  luxuries  of  a  southern 
soil  may  be  enjoyed  in  freshness  and  abundance  amid 
the  snows  of  the  north,  and  the  more  inviy-oratin"; 
products  of  a  northern  climate  soften  and  relieve  the 
scorching  heats  of  southern  skies.  Our  State  is  one 
that  will  enjoy  the  richest  fruits  of  the  railway.  It 
will  fill  our  harbors  with  shi})s  bearing  the  connnerce 
of  every  sea  ;  it  will  plant  factories  on  every  running 
stream,  and  make  our  valleys  echo  to  the  music  of  the 
water-wheel  and  the  s])inninu:-iennv,  and  our  broad 
plains  and  hillsides  bloom  and  ilourish  like  a  garden. 
The  cities  of  the  sea-side  shall  exchange  conunodities 


THE    RAILWAY.  53 

.and  civilities  witli  tlie  cities  of  the  interior,  and  tlie 
hardy  dwellers  in  the  mountains  sliall  come  down  to 
the  ocean  to  enjoy  its  s])orts,  its  toils,  and  daiiLicrs ; 
and  residents  at  the  si-a-siiK',  and  tliose  that  uo  iij)on 
the  ocean,  shall  seek  their  summer  sports  jiniong  the 
highlands  and  lakes  ot'the  interior. 

North  America  is  destined  to  hecome  the  seat  of 
the  great  jxjlitical  power  of  the  world;  and  it  is  upon 
this  continent  that  the  railway  is  to  achieve  its  great- 
est trium})lis.  Here  the  coidiguration  of  the  earth 
throughout  the  northern  temperate  zone  favors  indus- 
trial hal)its.  sinnlarity  of  pui'suits.  and  unity  of  jioliti- 
cal  [)urpose,  leading  l)y  inevitable  deduction  to  wide- 
spread empire.  The  ci'utre  of  this  continent  is  the 
most  productive  region  of  the  glohe  ;  that  of  the  east- 
ern hemisphere,  u  vast  desert,  elevated  ahove  the 
general  level  of  the  coiitinent.  so  as  to  foiiu  a  common 
rain-shed  for  rivers  ruiming  in  o[)po>ite  directions, 
leading  to  a  complete  separation  of  iutei'ests;  the 
Russian  dominions  at  the  noi'th,  the  Chinese  Km])ire 
at  the  east,  and  the  Indian  States  of  the  south,  com- 
pletely severed  from  each  other,  while  Kuro|)e  is 
broken  hv  mountain  ranu'es,  divided  into  local  states 
isolated  fiom  each  other,  with  the  exception,  perhaps, 
of  the  northern  German  states,  from  the  .\l])s  to  the 
Baltic,  which  may  })ossihly  form  u  great  central  power 
under  a  future  Bismarck. 

In  striking  contrast  to  the  Old  "World,  the  centre 
of  this  continent,  by  force  of  physical  laws,  makes  all 
who  dwell  within  it  practically  one  people.     Access 


54  TIIE   RAILWAY. 

to  the  valley  of  the  Mississippi,  by  artificial  means, 
has  oontrolled  the  civilization  of  the  continent,  and 
produced  the  great  results  of  our  late  war. 

The  colonization  of  the  continent  commenced  npon 
the  Atlantic  slope  ;  and  this  east  foreland  of  the  con- 
tinent, stretching  one  thousand  miles  towards  the 
continent  of  Europe,  would  have  been  the  great  high- 
way of  the  world,  but  for  the  rivalships  and  struggles 
fm-  its  possession  l)y  the  European  powers,  who  start- 
ed out  at  the  commencement  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury with  plans  for  its  colonization.  Its  possession  is 
of  far  more  value  than  that  of  the  mouth  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi. 

That  portion  of  North  America  lying  east  of  Lake 
Champlain  and  the  Hudson  and  south  of  the  St.  Law- 
rence, of  which  Maine  is  so  important  a  part,  is  des- 
tined to  a  rapid  development  hereafter,  as  soon  as  its 
commercial  relations  are  properly  established,  and  to 
become  the  most  densely  populated  portion  of  the 
gl()})e.  For  it  has  water-power  in  addition  to  the  oth- 
er elements  of  physical  strength  which  characterizes 
other  sections  of  the  continent,  and  is  the  most  health- 
ful of  all,  from  proximity  to  the  sea,  the  agreeable 
alternations  of  its  clinuite,  and  its  unilbrm  supply 
of  moisture,  enabling  operative  labor  to  continue 
throughout  the  year,  with  less  diminution  of  physical 
strength  than  elsewhere,  while  the  length  and  severi- 
ty of  its  winters  enforces  habits  of  steady  industry, 
compels  the  construction  of  public  edifices  and  per- 
manent dwellings,  and  leads  of  necessity  to  the  accu- 


THE    IIAILWAV.  55 


mulatlon  of  realized  wealtli.  wliidi  is  only  found  in 
large  measure  in  eool  latitudes,  and  upon  a  severe  but 
retentive  soil. 

It  is  only  two  hundred  and  sixty  years  since  the 
English  raee  established  title  upon  this  contiticnt.  ap- 
parently with  less  means  of  surcess  tlian  many  others 
of  the  seven  European  powers  who  eud)arke(l  simul- 
taneously in  rival  projects  for  its  ))ossession.  The 
Ensxlish  soon  demonstrated  their  suiierioritv.  At  the 
end  of  one  hundred  yeai's  thev  liad  lii'own  intoelexen 
distinct  colonies,  embracing  three  hundred  tliousand 
people.  In  sixty  years  more  they  bad  ])ossessed 
themselves  of  the  northern  lakes  and  tlie  eastt'rn  wa- 
ters, holding  the  Atlantic  slope  from  the  St.  Lawrence 
to  Florida.  In  1783  the  great  American  Kepublic 
became  established  as  an  independent  nation,  embra- 
cing an  area  of  815,015  square  miles  of  territory,  and 
over  3,000,000  of  people ;  —  tlie  iK^me  government  re- 
taininfr  the  eastern  ocean-front,  the  lower  St.  Fiaw- 
rence  basin,  and  a  territory  west  and  north  reacliing 
to  the  Pacific  and  Northern  Oceans,  containing  as  now 
known,  a  territory  of3,250,9-U  square  miles,  a  portion 
of  which  recently  put  on  the  form  of  a  new  national- 
ity under  the  name  of  the  '' Domiuio)!  of  ('(iNfif/d." 
In  1803  Louisiana  was  acquired,  adding  032,028 
square  miles  to  our  dominions;  in  1821  Spain  re- 
leased to  us  Florida,  with  59,268  square  miles  of  terri- 
tory;  and  in  1845  we  accepted  Texas  as  a  State,  add- 
ino-  237,514  square  miles  to  the  area  of  the  nati(mal 
domain.    In  184G  Oregon  added  280,425  square  miles 


56  THE   RAILWAY. 

more ;  and  by  the  treaty  of  1848,  640,702  square 
miles  came  to  us  in  California  and  New  Mexico.  In 
1854  the  Giulsden  treaty  brought  in  27,500  square 
miles  of  new  territory  now  included  in  Arizona,  and 
the  Russian  treaty  of  1807  added  Alaska,  or  Russian 
America,  with  481,270  square  miles  of  new  dominion, 
giving  to  the  United  States  of  America  an  area  of 
3,482,278  square  miles  of  the  most  flivored  territory 
of  the  globe,  now  inhabited  by  more  than  35,000,000 
of  people,  enjoying  equality  of  right,  and  speakmg  a 
common  language. 

The  physical  divisions  of  the  United  States  may  be 
better  understood  by  the  following  statement :  — 


Atlantic  Slope, 

514,416 

square  miles. 

Northern  I.ake  region, 

112,G49 

U                (( 

Gulf  region, 

343,935 

u           u 

Mississippi  Valley  and  tributaries, 

1,244,000 

il             u 

Pacific  Slope,  south  49th  parallel, 

78G,002 

t(           it 

Alaska,  or  Russian  America, 

481,276 

u          n 

Total,  3,482,278 

The  bulk  of  the  population  of  the  United  States  still 
occupies  the  Atlantic  slope,  holding  vast  influence  by 
its  wealth,  commercial  development,  and  manufactur- 
ing resources. 

The  Mississippi  Valley,  now  rapidly  filling  up,  re- 
mained comparatively  inaccessible  till  we  gained  pos- 
session of  the  mouth  of  the  Mississi])pi  liiver  by  pur- 
chase of  Louisiana  from  France.  This  opened  a  new 
route  to  the  heart  of  the  continent,  the  great  grain- 
growing  and  food-producing  region  of  the  world. 

The  civilization  and  habits  of  a  people  at  the  mouth 


THE   RAILWAY.  '       57 

of  a  river  naturally  move  upward  by  that  natural 
highway,  and  the  Mississippi  Valley  would  apparent- 
ly have  been  all  slave  territory  but  for  the  opening 
of  the  Erie  Canal  hi  1825,  which  gave  to  the  more 
populous  free  Northern  States  of  the  Atlantic  slope 
better  access  to  the  Ohio  and  Upper  Mississippi  waters 
than  by  the  tedious  journey  by  river ;  and  the  open- 
ing of  railways  directly  across  the  mountain  ranges, 
from  the  Atlantic  States,  at  right  angles  with  the 
general  course  of  the  Mississippi,  and  along  the  shores 
of  the  northern  lakes,  fdled  the  Northwest  with  men 
educated  in  the  school  of  free  labor.  This  settled  the 
struggle  in  18G5,  by  the  overthrow  of  the  slave  power, 
which  contest  was  a  war  for  dominion  between  two 
rival  systems  of  civilization,  planted  simultaneously 
two  hundred  and  forty-one  years  ])efore  the  outbreak, 
both  of  which  continued  to  grow  and  expand  uncon- 
scious of  their  future  antagonism,  till  they  awoke  from 
dreams  of  perpetual  peace  by  the  clash  of  resounding 
arms.  Had  there  been  no  railways  from  the  Atlantic 
States  to  the  Mississippi  Valley,  the  war  would  now 
be  upon  us,  or  foi'cign  states  bordering  the  Gulf,  in  a 
condition  of  acknowledged  independence^  through  the 
armed  intervention  of  France  and  England.  We  may 
fairly  claim,  therefore,  that  the  railway  has  been  the 
great  defender  of  the  government  in  its  hour  of  trial, 
while  in  peace  it  has  been  its  chief  benefactor. 

But  time  forbids  us  to  look  far  into  the  future, 
nuicii  less  to  linger  on  enchanted  ground.  The 
severe  duties  of  the  hour  summon  us  to  action. 
While  busy  hands  are  pushing  out  the  iron  arm  of 


58  THE   RAILWAY. 

the  railway  to  the  farthest  east,  on  the  Atlantic 
shore,  other  hands  are  scaling  the  Rocky  Mountain 
ridges,  on  their  way  to  the  far-off  Pacific  seas. 
Feats  in  the  late  war  like  that  which  transferred  a 
vast  corps  from  the  Army  of  the  Potomac,  by  the 
valley  of  the  Ohio,  to  the  destroying  army  of  Sher- 
man in  the  Southwest,  surpass  the  fabled  wonders 
of  the  marches  of  Hannibal  and  Alexander,  —  the 
marvels  of  ancient  campaigns,  —  while  the  silent 
and  humane  mission  of  the  railway  brings  us  the 
blessings  of  peace  in  the  most  attractive  forms, — 
m  fireside  homes,  cultivated  fields,  thriving  villages, 
busy  workslipps,  and  the  refinements  of  commer- 
cial cities. 

As  in  war,  so  in  peace,  the  locomotive  railway 
performs  its  office.  Railways  will  cross  the  conti- 
nent at  its  widest  part,  connect  the  upper  lakes 
with  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  and  bind  the  Pacific  to 
the  Atlantic  States  in  bands  of  iron,  stronger  than 
political  bonds;  for  they  will  be  bonds  of  mutual 
interest,  social  attachment,  and  commercial  advan- 
tage, that  no  power  for  evil  shall  ever  break. 

In  the  Old  World  railways  shall  stretch  from  the 
banks  of  the  Neva  to  tlie  Straits  of  Gibraltar  along 
the  western  slopes  of  the  Alps;  and  from  the  foot 
of  Italy  to  the  farthest  bounds  of  Siberia  on  their 
eastern  declivities,  in  unbroken  lines;  intersected 
by  lines  on  parallels  of  latitude  from  the  German 
Ocean  or  the  eastern  Atlantic  shore,  to  the  Bos- 
phorus  and  the  Chinese  Sea ;  breaking  down  national 
antipathies,   harmonizing    different  civilizations,  and 


THE   RAILWAY. 


69 


elevating  all  in  the  scale  of  humanity,  until  men 
of  all  cUnies  and  races  shall  become  ''one  great 
brotherhood  of  nations " ;  realizing;  all  that  one  of 
the  most  charming  of  our  modern  English  poets 
has  said  in  his  Somj  of  the  Railrwuh:  — 

"  And  if,  when  like  a  net  we  lie 

O'er  many  a  distant  soil, 
And  filad  tlie  traveller's  mind  and  eye 

Without  a  traveller's  toil,  — 
From  mutual  virtues  understood 

All  scorn  and  hate  shall  Hee, 
What  instruments  of  Goil  and  •,'ood 

Be  mi'ditier  then  than  we  I " 


APPENDIX. 


RAILROADS   OF   THE   WORLD. 

Sfiitnn^nf  af  ttw  Lmiilli  n/'llip  Itiiilnnvh  in  tin'  ni'rirnl  Coioilrlis  nj'  thf  World,  con- 
siniiitil  mill  in  iirlii'il  O/h nilinii  ill  tin-  (.'liisf  ii/'llir  )'iiii-  1,^06  ;  icil/i  t/itir  Cnsl,  the 
Aim  mill  I'lijiiiliil'iiii  it/'iiir/i  <  'iiiiiitri/  iitiil  Slnlr  irlurr  limlinnils  iirf  in  Opirdliort, 
and  till'.  Iiiitio  of  Milta  uf  l\iiiiu\iy  tu  l/ir  Si/itart  Milf,  and  tit  the  I'uiiulation,  u/tuch- 

Wkstkus  IIkmi!4i>iikuk. 


Uoitcd  States. 

.Miles. 

Cost. 

Cost 
P<'r 
Mile. 

Arpn  of 
Country. 

Pq.'M: 

I'nptilntlon 
1»0U. 

ii 
it 

S<i.  M. 

I'OI). 

!* 

Mninc 

60'i.37 

18,2r.'.235 

30.315 

31.760 

628,279 

62 

1,2.34 

New  iramp.sliire 

e.-iO-a:! 

22,052.003 

.33,410 

9.2S0 

320,073 

14 

496 

VuriiKuit 

b9l.sn 

34,892.231 

41.884 

10.212 

315,098 

17 

629 

.MllSSUcllllSCttS 

l..im.n(i 

79.100.771 

59.704 

7.800 

1,231.066 

6 

926 

lilioilu  Isliiiid 

ll!l..'l 

4.s.")8,79!t 

40.737 

1.300 

174.020 

11 

1.467 

( 'oiini'cticut 

0:17. 'i  I 

21.370,018 

3M.225 

4.074 

400,117 

7 

721 

Nfw  York 

3.0J.'J.3O 

152.570,709 

.50,131 

47.000 

3.8W),735 

15 

1,283 

Ni'w  Jersey 

!t01.4l 

55.99J.403 

01,913 

8.320 

072.035 

9 

743 

reiltisylviillia 

4.0.17. 1.'i 

310.080,309 

52.037 

46.000 

3.900,115 

11 

720 

I  )e  law  a  re 

167.10 

6,tiOO,804 

37,279 

2.120 

112,210 

13 

714 

Marylaii.l  .>t  1).  C. 

620.tl{l 

30.573,275 

59„501 

11.1X1 

762,1. '9 

21 

1.457 

West  Vir;,Miiiii 

301.7.) 

21,978.843 

08,498 

20.511 

319.098 

56 

958 

Kelitiiiky 

6:.J.!I0 

22..392.122 

35,770 

.37.0SO 

1.155.084 

60 

1,840 

Ohio 

3.40i.9H 

135,231,975 

39,739 

39.904 

2.339.511 

11 

687 

.Mielii:;ail 

900.  Ij 

41,075,724 

43.1.33 

60.243 

719.113 

58 

776 

Iiiiliaiia 

O.i 11.80 

79,  ISO, 707 

35.802 

33.S(i9 

1.. 3.50.428 

15 

610 

Illiiiiiis 

3. '250.05 

139.081,414 

42.791 

55,105 

1.711.951 

17 

527 

\Vi>e()ii-iii 

1.015.41 

40.0M.300 

38,313 

63.9.' 1 

775. HSl 

51 

742 

Miiiile>(ilii 

39-.'.00 

12.450.000 

31.760 

83. .531 

172,123 

213 

4.39 

lowu 

1,154.10 

45. 180.000 

.39.407 

55.015 

671.913 

47 

498 

Missouri 

937.75 

61,.l.-i7.077 

51.995 

07.3nO 

1.182.012 

72 

1.200 

Kansas 

240..M) 

9.750.00O 

40.510 

78.118 

107.206 

327 

445 

Nelira.-ka 

275.00 

12.500.000 

45.154 

70.9  ■'^ 

2S.S11 

279 

105 

("alifoniiii 

,    3'^  1.50 

■  24.2((0;0(K1 1  75  272 

lftS.68-; 

379.994 

688 

1.180 

(>re;ri)ii                ;  ■ 

.    -Ut.flO 

.   .     fiOO,00()|  /5.041 

■.  9.1.J7.1 

•      52. 105 

6.01 1 

2.090 

N'ivL'inia 

I.llR!7h 

49,974,457     35,27.) 

61*.  3*52 

'    I.2I0.3.SI 

43 

879 

Niirtli  Carolimt    •  . 

•  jri'..:w 

•  :2o;o20-.;io 

*.  .  2,5/.Hl-f.il77 

2lVfh.^ 

oO.idl 

09  .',007 

52 

1.010 

Souili  ("aruliiij 

iW^.flS 

2,i;i9i 

29.3s-> 

7113..-12 

28 

711 

(ieor^iia        '  *  '     ' 

■l.4.3i'!i 

•    ■2fl.:77,'003 

20;3o( 

'  52.(109 

r.0.-)7.329 

36 

737 

rioriila 

407.50 

W.sOS.OOO 

21.702 

59.209 

110.139 

145 

346 

Aialiaiiia 

891.16 

21,010,982 

25.154 

50.722 

901.290 

67 

182 

Mississiiipi 

H07.1i 

25.410,394 

29.315 

47.1.50 

791.390 

54 

913 

■[''■imessee 

1,317.78 

34,185,215 

25.937 

45.011(1 

1.109.801 

34 

842 

Arkansas 

191.00 

4.400,000 

43,562 

62.198 

435,427 

273 

2,279 

1  Louisiana 

335.75 

13,027,651 

40.,577 

40.131 

709.290 

i:W 

2.111 

Texas 

479..50 

17.280.000 

36,044 

037..J01 

002.132 

495 

1.267 

Tenitories 

Total 

:Ui,s!t6.26 

1.517.510.705 

41.129 

1.213.110 
3,001.002 

521.387 
31.747.511 

Bl 

1        860 

Countrlei. 

Milei. 

Canmlft 

9,im.ft0 

New  Brunswick 

iflH.jn 

Nova  Scotia 

SJ.MO 

Mexico 

7H.;io 

(' 11 1)11 

390.50 

Jainiiica 

1.1.H0 

VeiR'/.iiela 

3.'.00 

Now  (iniiiada 

■IT.ftO 

Hriti>li  Guinea 

ftn.no 

Urazil 

w.^.m 

i'aia;;uiiy 

4U.'J0 

IVru 

6ft.;io 

{,'liili 

336,70 

xVrgeiitine  Republic 

231.00 

Total 

4.170.00 

.VrPENDLX. 
Western  IIkmihi'iirrk  [Continueil). 


61 


Co«t. 


» 

lll.ft|3,l90 

7.1!»7.7I3 

4,3l!»,.'i07 

4,010.000 

19.H«.{I00 

3J7,00O 

9,7'J3,ti06 

7,f>.):).010 

ft.ono.ooo 

10I,.!a7,444 
4, 1)0'^. 000 
a,0J4.70fl , 
lo.fitij.gia 

1 1  .ftftO.OOO 


^™''   '  Arp»  of  '  Popiilntlon 
per     I'ouuiry.       Iwjl. 
Mile. 


»     i 
.W..'i73 

37,.16i 

46.44H 

fll.'JHJ 

AO.OOO 

■J3.3A7 

83.113 

11)1. lit) 

IdO.nno 

■i:i;i.b-9  •; 

100.0(0 
6-J.H"8 
f>l*.\Oi 
.W.OOO  1. 


8q.  M. 

3.^^.M2•.' 
i7.7nj 

lN,74tij 
77J.ii7-i : 

47. •••7^ 
«.-.V,0 ! 
4'i«.7O0 
uJI.900 

9t).;iii0 
.973.400 

»6.'00 
49S.700 
549.900 
lJti.3(lO 


3H,87H.1'W    7H.'JN0  7.'.'09.H7J 


3..W7.6S7 

•-•.•>.',n47 

33n.ti!><» 

8.-.'.'i9.0-0 

1.449.'.'6J 

411.-JI>1 

I..w».ono 

1,797.47:1 
l.VVO-.'fi 
lO.OJ.-i.UOO 
1,337.431 
i.SOO.OOO 
1,711.319 
l.-.'.^9..t.'i.i 

3J.fil3.til.'» 


III 

»«  M. 

I      139 

■101 

9,900 

119 

446 

13,3.14 

10,><31 

1  .riO'i 

6.867 

1,87» 

9,067 

7JJ 

4.f76 


Si. 


I'nl). 
1.11)7 
l.-.'73 
3..).')ii 

in.'i.  1^0 

3,6.^1 
31..)18 

4H,90« 

im.-i^o 

•»,I9H 
29,07 » 
4.'-,|.V5 

.^.nt<7 

,'i.4.VJ 
16.078 


Kasteh.v  Hemispiikkf.. 


Hritish  Isles 

13,-.'H6.00 

France 

8,981.&0 

Spai). 

3,116.40 

I'or'  (ipal 

433.30  J 

Switzerland 

814.30  1 

I  till  V 

3,113.10 

Austria 

3,830.90 

Prussia 

5.794.80  j 

N.  (lermnn  States 

1  .OOL.'JO 

S.  Gerniau  States 

l„ilO.IO 

nel;;ium 

l.SS.i.lOj 

Holland 

700.70 

Denmark 

195.10 

Sweden 

1.01.3.401 

Norway 

43.50  j 

Russia 

1.775.10 1 

Turkey  in  Europe 

170.60: 

Turkey  in  Asia 

141.90 

Hritish  India 

3.379.10 

Java 

101.40  1 

Cevlon 

36.90 

Ktrypt 

281.10 « 

Al;;eria 

27.70, 

Cajie  Colony 

84..'J0| 

Victoria 

331.,W 

New  South  Wales 

14.I..10 

South  Australia 

73..^0  1 

New  Zealand 

16..')0 ! 

Natal 

2.00 

Queensland 

41.10 

Total 

53.381. .50  6 

1.071,9h8,008  l.i6,0J8 

L.LM.  1 11,891  l.in.749 

301,857.610,  96.861 

41,166,105;  97,314 

68,691.391  I  83,333 

297,510,188  I  91,590 

273,798.163)  71,471 

741.560,310  119,784 

89.734,347  !  88.717 

215,375,4.')3  I  88,717 

171,410,677  IQS.O.'S 

67,171,101    9.').Kli3 

16,885,9.50;  57,155 

96,510,947'  91,314 

2,416.641     as. 5.53 

4.53.313.734   163,411 

6,741. .590    .13.667 

4,811,014     .13.6ii7 

109,838.517     61.803 

10,140,000  100,000 

2.l8i).530    1)1, "03 

28,110.000  100.000 

1,816.676  66.667 

7,514.667  89.186 

84, .166.750  154, .500 

10.453.6.10  71.«60 

3, 619. .590  43.910 

1.6.50.000  loo.noo 

200,000  100.000 
4,110,000  100,000 

.660.470,6.55    94,447 


Hl,.5.50 
113,100 
189,.5.50 
35,1.50 
13.170 
109,780 


19.070.936 

37.171.731 

16.031,167  j 

3.9«7.861 1 

1.510. 19» 

14.169.61*  I 

140,1^)0    31,.573.001| 

135.110     13.577.9.191 

5.600.391 1 

8..513,40OJ 

4.940.570 

3.735.6M1 1 

1,608.095 

4,114.141 

1,701.178' 


9i 

S3 

60, 

81. 

is' 

34 
63 
33' 


1.188 
4,171 
6,1S0 
i»,207 
3,046 
7,563 
8.500 
4,067 


24,677 

44,510 

11,400 

13.600 

14.710 

170.099 

113,118 
I 
1,563,100    63.>'61.l'*l 

103, .1*1 '  13.700.000 

6.18. 9'M)     16.000.1)00 

1,465,300  1^0,.500,IM)fl, 

51,.100     13,917.0001 

2.341.098  ' 

7.16.5.0(10 

3,000.000 


11.660 
659.0(i0 

83.300 
101.9.10 

86.940 
311.417 
383. 3J8 
106.159 

14.100 
675.000 


167.100 
574.331 
378.9.15 
140.416 
173.337  6. 
156.100 
59.711 


7.8S3.0.5?i  .506.1.56,917     1.471 


ii    a. 127 

17  I    3,3S4 

3,197 
5.319 
5,431 
4.011 
3.956 
23.731 
91,807 
11.189 
8. .117 
1.177 
63,199 
26. .565 
033  107.  HI 
1.16  3.166 
1.731 
2.601 
1.916 
10.318 
T:<.O0fl 
l.»o6 

9.J81 


7 
19 
49 
166 
,834 
,564 
,l-<9 
,169 
433 
.507 
666 
134 


161 
116 
108 
440 
710 
439 


